Re: Adding lzma to dpkg's Pre-Depends
On Tue, Apr 01, 2008 at 01:42:32PM +0200, Lionel Elie Mamane wrote:
> On the more general issue of lzma-compresses packages, I find a 34MB
> RAM requirement quite hefty for general purpose use; that is, unless
> we restrict lzma compression to packages that wouldn't make sense on
> hardware with so little RAM anyway (such as e.g. OpenOffice.org, but
> nothing in base, nothing one would install on a pure router /
> lightweight server such as iptables, kernels, FTP/HTTP daemons, ...).
lzma compression has to be explicitly enabled on a per-package basis.
Ideally, it's only going to be enabled on those packages where it makes the
most sense to do so - i.e., precisely those packages that get the greatest
absolute size savings by using the different compression method.
OOo is a great example of a package that benefits. Here is the analysis
that was done based on Ubuntu 7.10 to evaluate the benefits of lzma,
including a list of the top ten binary packages by size savings:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/dpkg-lzma
So of course besides OOo on there we also find the kernel packages. We
wouldn't have to use lzma for the kernels though, if that would raise the
minimum memory requirements for servers, or lzma could be selectively
enabled on a per-flavor or per-arch basis as appropriate.
Note that this list focuses on the contents of the Ubuntu CD, so for
Debian's purposes it would be better to redo the analysis against the
archive as a whole and look for which packages can save the most space by
this method.
--
Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/
slangasek@ubuntu.com vorlon@debian.org
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