diff --git a/poky/meta/recipes-bsp/u-boot/u-boot-tools.inc b/poky/meta/recipes-bsp/u-boot/u-boot-tools.inc
index 8ae290a..4ed936a 100644
--- a/poky/meta/recipes-bsp/u-boot/u-boot-tools.inc
+++ b/poky/meta/recipes-bsp/u-boot/u-boot-tools.inc
@@ -23,6 +23,21 @@
 SED_CONFIG_EFI_aarch64 = ''
 
 do_compile () {
+	# Yes, this is crazy. If you build on a system with git < 2.14 from scratch, the tree will
+	# be marked as "dirty" and the version will include "-dirty", leading to a reproducibility problem.
+	# The issue is the inode count for Licnses/README changing due to do_populate_lic hardlinking a
+	# copy of the file. We avoid this by ensuring the index is updated with a "git diff" before the
+	# u-boot machinery tries to determine the version.
+	#
+	# build$ ../git/scripts/setlocalversion ../git
+	# ""
+	# build$ ln ../git/
+	# build$ ln ../git/README ../foo
+	# build$ ../git/scripts/setlocalversion ../git
+	# ""-dirty
+	# (i.e. creating a hardlink dirties the index)
+	cd ${S}; git diff; cd ${B}
+
 	oe_runmake -C ${S} sandbox_defconfig O=${B}
 
 	# Disable CONFIG_CMD_LICENSE, license.h is not used by tools and