Re: why apt/dpkg not using bzip2
On Sun, Sep 03, 2000 at 06:09:27PM +0600, Sergey I. Golod wrote:
> Ben Collins wrote:
>
> > > > Yeah, but I guess it would take about twice the time to unpack. Please
> > > > don't do that to my poor 486 :-((
> > >
> > > But extra size = extra traffic = extra money, that's worse. Unpack no cost at all
> > > (except you time, ofcourse).
> > >
> > > wbr, Serge.
> > >
> > > p.s. If Debian change default compression to bzip2 in future, we can save about
> > > ~20-25% in size of distribution. It especially important to reduce network
> > > traffic in update&upgrade operations.
> >
> > Now, we cannot save that much. Your example of compressing pure text is
> > not a measure of this whole archive. I've tested it, and converted an
> > entire local binary-sparc/main tree to internal bzip2 compression. It
> > saved a grand total of 197 megs from 1.5gigs. Roughly 15% at a quick
> > guess. This wouldn't even drop us down a single CD.
>
> Yes, binaries. But you also forgot about sources. Or 15% - include binary&source?
Lots of sources already use bzip2 internally, so there's a no-gain
situation with some.
> > We have new things in the upcoming dpkg, one of those being to support
> > bzip2 in the package format. However, I don't see it being used in
> > Debian's archives right away.
>
> Anyway, sometime Debian-community must start this job.
Why? 15% b/w isn't that big of a deal unless you are mirroing the entire
distribution. If that's a big deal to you in that situation, buy a CD. On
top of that we start to have backward compability issues (some packages
will never be able to be compressed with bzip2 to insure we can still do
upgrades, etc...). Theoretically, it may sound nice, but technically,
there is no gain.
If we support it with the package manager, then it's a very simple script
to convert all packages to bz2 internally, and CD vendors can opt to do
this, and sell "compact" ISO's.
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