Yes, I agree that the issue is in the toolchain. And more reproducibility in this area is a much more general and important problem. Even without aiming for b

Yes, I agree that the issue is in the toolchain. And more reproducibility in this area is a much more general and important problem. Even without aiming for bitwise reproducibility, it's still very hard to properly package your software and its dependencies. That is one reason why reproduction is so rare: simply installing the dependencies is too hard. So a sufficient improvement in toolchains/package management etc. would probably enable bitwise reproducibility, but I think a lot of people in this thread, and the original article, were implying that current tools are sufficient and scientists just need to stop being lazy.