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Re: Please add lzip support in the repository



Maria Bisen wrote...

> I've got the feeling that the distribution the thread talks about is
> precisely yours, Debian's. As stated there, giving support to lzip in
> Debian seems feasable and easy. Could it be possible, then, to add
> lzip support? : )

If I understand correctly, it's about using using the lzip method in the
places where Debian uses compression as part of actually distributing
data, like the Packages index file or inside .deb files - the lzip
application has been around for years.

Without a particular feeling for or against lzip, I just don't like to
idea of adding yet another compression method. The zoo is already quite
huge and I'm not keen on extending regular expressions like

    \.(gz|bz2|lzma|xz)$

that I have in many places again and again. So, before adding more,
I'd appreciate a cleanup first, and would try to keep the number of
compression methods that are in use - back to oldstable - at a maximum
of three. The old gzip should always be part of the list since it still
has the widest support. The bz2 and lzma compressions, neither fast nor
efficient, are obviously the first candidates for removal, this has
already happened to some extent.

Also I doubt the reduced disk space and network bandwitdth usage of any
new kid on the block (there's also zstd) really justifies the work
needed to implement the support in the many tools that deal with the
files. I might be convinced otherwise.

    Christoph

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