Re: deb + tar + bzip2 suggestion
James Troup <J.J.Troup@scm.brad.ac.uk> writes:
> Stephan Kulow <coolo@itm.mu-luebeck.de> writes:
>
> > > I think it would be a good idea to teach tar to unpack bzip2 files
> > > via the -z option, just as if it would be gzip. Alternativly one
> > > could teach gzip to use bzip2 for .bz2 archives or teach dpkg to
> > > distinguish between the two.
> > >
> > > The main advantage would be that one could use tar.bz2 for deb
> > > packages without altering dpkg and thereby save a lot of space.
> > >
> > > Whats the general opinion about this and is maybe somebody already
> > > working on it?
> >
> > I think, you could save some space, but the installation time of
> > Debian would increase dramaticly.
>
> And Debian would become unviable on low memory machines - bzip2 hogs
> memory and is deadly slow compared to gzip - and, what's more, you
> wouldn't actually see a significant benefit on 90% of the debs because
> they are not the size where bzip2's savings really kick in. So for
> the vast majority of cases you'd do nothing but slow installation down
> and increase the already heavy cost in memory of installation.
I don't want to force anybody or anything to use bzip2, but it would
be nice if it wouldn't make a difference. Some packages would greatly
benefit from it, some wouldn't. Why not use bzip2 for packages which
benefit greatly. The base system and its packages must stay (at least
partly) in gziped form anyway, because otherwise one couldnt update
anymore.
Also memory shouldn't be a problem, packages like X take large amounts
of memory, so only people having "large" amounts (8 MB +) would install
it (or they are used to waiting for swap). Those large Packages would
benefit from bzip2 and people with not enough ram to run bzip2 will
hardly use them.
Also for some source packages it would be nice to have them in bzip2
format. Agsin, why shouldn't it be possible to use bzip2 for them?
As long as we have -z and -I every programm must distinguish between
gzip and bzip2 and many programms dont. When tar or gzip automatically
uses the right one it doesn't matter what one uses. One could use
both depending on what fits best.
One could tell dpkg-buildpackage to use bzip2 for packages where bzip2
brings a large size decrease and gzip otherwise, or one could just use
it for packages where the upstream Source is in bzip2 format.
> > BTW: tar can handle bz2 files. you can use
> > --use-compress-program=bzip2.
>
> or the -I option with tar (>= 1.12-3).
One would have to distinguish between the both (-z and -I) which makes
things more complicated.
May the Source be with you.
Mrvn
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