Re: /usr/share/doc/ files and gzip/xz/no compression

[Ben Hutchings <ben@decadent.org.uk>]

On Tue, Aug 16, 2011 at 10:51:30AM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Adam Borowski <kilobyte@angband.pl> writes:
> 
> > On the other hand, zcat and zless are nothing but thin shell wrappers
> > over "gzip -cd", without loads of extra functionality lesspipe has.  I'd
> > turn them into a C program linked against zlib (priority: required),
> > liblzma2 (priority: required) and libbz2 (priority: important, might be
> > dlopened instead).
> 
> One angle of this discussion is confusing me: zcat and zless are upstream
> binaries that are part of a package that we build from upstream source.
> That upstream is gzip; presumably the gzip maintainers aren't particularly
> interested in adding build dependencies on other compression formats.  (I
> wouldn't be if I were them; it seems a bit outside their bailiwick.)
> 
> Are people who are proposing that we change these programs proposing we
> build a new package with binaries of those same names and use
> alternatives?  That Debian fork gzip?  Something else?
 
I propose that we provide a separate package containing zcat, zless,
etc., remove them from gzip and make gzip depend on the new package.
As for who maintains the new package, no I am not volunteering.

Ben.

-- 
Ben Hutchings
We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking.
                                                              - Albert Camus