Another reason to avoid bz2 and other more esoteric compressors in debs uded by debootstrap is that debootstrap is run on systems other than d-i and debian. When debootstrap is used on a busybox based embedded system, bzip2 will likely not be available. When debootstrap is used on some old crufty[1] distribution, lzma and xz are likely not available. Adding these to the system before running debootstrap could be significant work. Recommend this bug is cloned to lintian, and lintian has checks added for Priority: required and above. Then the ftpmasters could even autoreject based on those checks (assuming the debs' built-in Priority info is accurate). -- see shy jo [1] such as eg, debian 5.0 :P
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