HACKER Q&A
📣 franzwong

Why don't we create checksum for source code?


Suppose a developer puts the source code of an App in Github, so that we can review the source code to ensure it is securely safe for users. I know we create checksum for the binaries. But how can we know the App in App store is built from the source code in Github?


  👤 bloak Accepted Answer ✓

👤 remexre
https://nixos.org/ and https://guix.gnu.org/ are both angling to do this, but... it's hard.

👤 smt88
The majority of useful software will not build into identical binary files each time.

If you trust the source code, it's usually easy enough to build a mature FOSS app yourself.