The build IDs in unversioned copies of Go include a hash of the compiler binary to incorporate the semantics of the compiler somehow (the version string is assumed good enough in a versioned copy, although that's only true if you don't modify the files in your versioned checkout), so this is working as expected.

We saw this behavior with 1.20.3 as well, not running tip.

Er, would that version string include the host operating system too?

Shouldn't, no. But maybe on 1.20.3 the build-ID depends on the GOAMD setting (which is the thing already fixed for 1.21). Maybe try checking out the development tree at HEAD, give it a VERSION file like go1.21.999999 (to avoid polluting the build cache if you forget to clean it), and see if that's enough?

Sure, let me find a working commit first :)

>$ (cd src && bash all.bash)
Building Go cmd/dist using /usr/lib64/go/1.20. (go1.20.3 linux/amd64)
Building Go toolchain1 using /usr/lib64/go/1.20.
# bootstrap/internal/platform
/home/jrick/src/go/src/internal/platform/zcgo.go:8: undefined: osArchSupportsCgo
/home/jrick/src/go/src/internal/platform/zcgo.go:12: undefined: osArchSupportsCgo
go tool dist: FAILED: /usr/lib64/go/1.20/bin/go install -tags=math_big_pure_go compiler_bootstrap purego bootstrap/cmd/...: exit status 1

For Go 1.20 you have the default GOARM discrepancy on Linux vs Windows, so I'm not sure how you'd have gotten far enough that -ldflags=-buildid= would help.

@jrick, you'll want to git clean away the files from my pending CL that you patched in to test earlier. 😅

FWIW, creating a VERSION file that says 'go1.999' and then doing

GOOS=windows CGO_ENABLED=0 go install -trimpath cmd/test2json

is known to produce the same binaries on Linux and Windows, because that's a subset of what we were testing in #58884, which no one was able to break. It's possible something has broken since then, but unlikely.

I believe that if you:

1. Start with a recent devel commit (not Go 1.20)
2. Create a VERSION file that says:
   go1.21repro99
   time 2023-04-11T00:00:00Z
3. Build the tree with cd src; ./make.bash -distpack

You should get identical output on any machine you run this on. The output is a hash of the overall distribution archive, which includes test2json as well as all the other binaries.

Can I leave out the 2nd time line?

C:\Users\jrick\src\go\src>make.bat -distpack
Building Go cmd/dist using C:\Program Files\Go. (go1.20.3 windows/amd64)
Building Go toolchain1 using C:\Program Files\Go.
Building Go bootstrap cmd/go (go_bootstrap) using Go toolchain1.
C:\Users\jrick\src\go\src\runtime\internal\math\math.go:7:8: could not import internal/goarch (object is [go object windows amd64 go1.21repro99
] expected [go object windows amd64 go1.21repro99
time 2023-04-11T00:00:00Z GOAMD64=v1 X:regabiwrappers,regabiargs
])

go tool dist: FAILED: C:\Users\jrick\src\go\pkg\tool\windows_amd64\compile -std -pack -o C:\Users\jrick\AppData\Local\Temp\go-tool-dist-1502108241\runtime\internal\math\_go_.a -p runtime/internal/math -importcfg C:\Users\jrick\AppData\Local\Temp\go-tool-dist-1502108241\runtime\internal\math\importcfg C:\Users\jrick\src\go\src\runtime\internal\math\math.go: exit status 2
C:\Users\jrick\src\go\src\runtime\internal\sys\consts.go:8:2: could not import internal/goarch (object is [go object windows amd64 go1.21repro99
] expected [go object windows amd64 go1.21repro99
time 2023-04-11T00:00:00Z GOAMD64=v1 X:regabiwrappers,regabiargs
])

What git commit are you building? That failure would happen if you were building an old (circa Go 1.20) copy of the source tree instead of a recent copy of the master branch.

Master (267b50a)

Oops! I confused myself about what is and is not checked in. The -distpack flag and the support for the 'time' line were still pending. I just submitted the CL seconds ago. You need 1635205 or later. Sorry.

Ignore that i hid that last comment. I saw different build hashes with geth still and marked it outdated. The build of test2json is properly reproducible now on tip with VERSION.

Great! Closing this issue, and we can work on geth in #59500.