Deterministic output

[o0Ignition0o]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

We have been (successfully, tysm! ❤️) using cargo about to generate our licenses.html file for a while, and we love it so much we have had a CI step that ensures the licenses.html file is always up to date.

We currently do that by invoking cargo about generate in CI and checking if there's a diff.

CI sometimes turns red, and after a bit of investigation it seems like the licenses.html file generation isn't deterministic.

Describe the solution you'd like

Would you be open to receiving a PR that makes licenses.html file generation deterministic?

I haven't dug too much yet (I wanted to first make sure this would fit your goals, and you'd be open to receiving a PR first), but this may involve having a (possibly gated) "preserve-order" feature on serde_json, but it might be a bit more involved.

Describe alternatives you've considered

We haven't considered any alternatives yet, but we'd be happy to discuss this if there's an other way to make sure licenses are always in sync :)

Thanks a lot! :)

[Jake-Shadle]

The output (or rather, the inputs to the template) is definitely supposed to be deterministic, so any PR fixing non-determinism would be welcomed.