> shouldn't it instead try to enforce determinism in any possible way
That would only fix the build machine's problem, it wouldn't fix anyone else's builds.
A repeatable build without determinism is a fix for all people everywhere.
That would only fix the build machine's problem, it wouldn't fix anyone else's builds.
A repeatable build without determinism is a fix for all people everywhere.
It would fix everyone else's builds if they added determinism in their builds (as opposed to adding non-determinism in the test-procedure). Besides, a test-procedure never gives a guarantee because a bug depending on non-determinism can be subtle.
That's the point - to uncover bugs dependent on nondeterminism by using a filesystem that introduces it. This is for fuzz testing at the filesystem level, not literally reproducing the builds correctly multiple times.
From the linked README:
"This is useful for detecting non-determinism in the build process."