Re: Size matters. Debian binary package stats

[Goswin von Brederlow <brederlo@informatik.uni-tuebingen.de>]

Ron Johnson <ron.l.johnson@cox.net> writes:

> On Wed, 2005-12-21 at 16:12 +0100, Goswin von Brederlow wrote:
>> "Steinar H. Gunderson" <sgunderson@bigfoot.com> writes:
>> 
>> > On Sun, Dec 18, 2005 at 12:34:56PM +0100, Gürkan Sengün wrote:
> [snip]
>> The transition itself would go completly unadministered. Once dpkg is
>> switched to default to a different compression all freshly build
>> packages use it and the archive transitions itself over time.
>
> Because a .deb would "know" whether it is compressed or not, and
> dpkg would dynamically determine whether it needed to decompress
> or not?

One would use the filename (e.g. data.tar.bz2) or a more elaborate
system (add another file to the ar archive stating the compression) or
something. The decompression must automaticaly pick whatever is right
for a specific deb or the implementation would be inherently flawed.

Only building a deb needs to be told or change the default what to use.

MfG
        Goswin