Debugging Unreproducible Builds using eBPF

In software development, a key concept is “reproducible builds”. These are builds where the exact same output (identical bits) is generated every time the same source code is compliled with the same tools. Unfortunately, achieving this consistency isn’t always straightforward. Software artifacts built through a complex build system can introduce a challenge to pinpoint or give an idea about the reason for the unreproducibility of a build. With the build process spanning multiple stages, observability in the build system is crucial to determine the point of failure. eBPF solves the problem by allowing to tap into syscalls and process executions. In more straightforward terms, it helps to give an estimate on what could probably be the reason for the unreproducibility. Writing eBPF programs from scratch requires a great deal of knowledge and is not something every organisation would do to debug their unreproducible builds. This paper aims to provide a highlevel solution to observe the build process.