`librefetch` respects `SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH`[1] for reproducible builds, and has had this behavior from the start (though the variable name wasn't there from the start, that came later). But how can this be!? If you asked h01ger (the guy heading up reproducible builds in Debian and Fedora), tar needs to support `--clamp-mtime` to do this, and that flag wasn't in any tar implementation when librefetch came into existence. The flag not yet being in upstream GNU tar was for a long time the biggest blocker to most of upstream Debian being reproducible! While it is a nice flag that I'm surprised wasn't added years ago, it's trivial to just adjust the input files first: find . -exec touch --no-dereference --date=DATE -- {} +` Of course, `--clamp-mtime`/`--mtime` is now in upstream GNU tar. So librefetch supporting this is no longer impressive. But, librefetch still isn't using `--mtime`. Why? Well, because it uses libarchive `bsdtar`, not GNU tar, and bsdtar still doesn't have the flag. I wrote this document mostly because I expect that sometime in the future I'll think to myself "I should simplify the code and just use `--mtime`", not remembering the differences between tars. [1]: https://reproducible-builds.org/specs/source-date-epoch/