.beam difference between builds and misc HiPE questions

[François-Denis Gonthier]

Hello all, this is your Debian packager,

Here is a set of question where answers could save me quite a bit of work (or 
add some more)

- I just noticed that everytime I build, whatever options I choose, the .beam 
files are actually changed.  The size is not changed in anyway but there is a 
small difference on the binary level.

What has changed? and most importantly for me, are those files interchangeable 
between builds?  I suppose the difference is something like a date to 
differentiate builds but I think it's easier for me to ask this list than dig 
the internals of .beam files.

- Another question, can I use .beam files produced in a no-hipe build with the 
VM produced in a HiPE build?  I suppose so too but I can be sure of this if 
I'm not sure of the previous question.

- Could enabling HiPE break the build of Erlang/OTP if there is a bug in HiPE 
on some specific platform?  If it's the case I'll need to build HiPE outside 
the main package to make sure people using that platform at least have the 
interpreted VM.  After building and rebuilding that package so many times, 
I'd think this is not the case.  The bootstrap compiler certainly isn't 
HiPE-enabled and the compiler the bootstrap produces doesn't seem to be used 
to compile the rest of the system, unlike in GCC and other compiler build.

F-D
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