Re: Suggestion to and how to alow different compression for .debs

[Chris Pimlott <pimlottc@null.net>]

On 21 Oct 1999, Goswin Brederlow wrote:
> Of cause policy should encourage to use bzip2 (or gzip if smaller) and 
> base packages must use tar.gz (or tar.bz2 if bzip2 is in base) so
> that one can update debian. Any package using a non default
> compression must predepend on that compressor, but that should be
> clear for the packaging scripts and maintainer.

	If there has to be a line added to control, why not instead make a
new line such as "Archive: tar.bz2" (with Archive: tar.gz assumed if
not specified) and not worry about a custom how_to_unpack script?
Granted, this method would only support predefined types but would be
simpler, and there aren't _that_ many formats people are dying to use -
tar.gz and tar.bz2 (and possibly tar.Z) could probably make 99.9% of
everyone happy, and stuff like tar.zip, tar.arj, tar.lha etc could be
added if anyone really wanted it.

	Chris Pimlott (IANADD)