[tor-bugs] #12461 [Tor Browser]: Firefox ESR 31 does need a newer compiler than GCC 4.4 on Linux

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#12461: Firefox ESR 31 does need a newer compiler than GCC 4.4 on Linux
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     Reporter:  gk           |      Owner:  gk
         Type:  defect       |     Status:  assigned
     Priority:  normal       |  Milestone:
    Component:  Tor Browser  |    Version:
   Resolution:               |   Keywords:  gitian, tbb-gitian
Actual Points:               |  Parent ID:  #12460
       Points:               |
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Comment (by gk):

 Okay, here comes the faketime story. Changes in the Firefox build system
 in ESR 31 broke our builds on all supported platforms reliably with an
 output similar to the one in comment:8. One option that I though of was
 using `.LOW_RESOLUTION_TIME` in the respective Makefiles. But it turned
 out that would not be enough as it just cuts the millisecond part which
 could lead to the same build failures.

 A better option is upgrading libfaketime especially as
 `FAKETIME_ONLY_CMDS` seems the thing we want: Using this environment
 variable we can exclude `make` processes while all other processes are
 still subject to libfaketime. And it turns out it works with some caveats:

 1) We need to disable libfaketime for `configure` scripts as well (this is
 currently done by resetting the env vars) as they hang reliably (one
 reason is the faking of nanoseconds but it is not the only one).

 2)  At least on Linux we need to disable libfaketime for the packaging
 step, too, as it results in the error in comment:11. The option for
 disabling monotonic time faking (introduced in 0.9.6) does not seem to
 help here.

 This approach might even be a workaround for faketime issues wrt other
 parts of the toolchain (see #11459)

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Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/12461#comment:12>
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