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+# Checking out and building
+
+## Stamping
+
+The Metropolis OS image is stamped with info from the current git commit (commit hash, commit date and dirty flag).
+This is useful when the image is deployed, as you know exactly which version is running in your cluster.
+Each time you make a commit or change the dirty state during development, the stamping info changes, forcing a rebuild of the OS image.
+This rebuild is quite cheap, since no binaries are rebuilt.
+However, it does invalidate cached test results for all end-to-end tests which depend on the OS image.
+If you prefer, you can disable stamping.
+
+To disable stamping, pass the `--config=nostamp` flag.
+Note that the builtin Bazel flag `--nostamp` does not work in this repo.
+To set this flag for all builds, create the file `.bazelrc.user` in the repository root with content `build --config=nostamp`.