Re: Please add lzip support in the repository

[Maria Bisen <mariabisen@gmail.com>]

Russ Allbery wrote:

> Oh, you're concerned with what upstream tarballs Debian can consume
> without repackaging.
>
> I don't see any reason why this should prevent GCC from releasing tarballs
> compressed with lzip if they want to.  They certainly wouldn't stop
> releasing tarballs in other formats, for a host of reasons, and Debian can
> just use one of the other formats.
>
> In other words, this is a "fake" dependency; there is nothing about
> Debian's tools or formats that prevents GCC from releasing tarballs with
> lzip.

Thanks for the explanation.

When I saw in the gcc thread that there's only one distribution not supporting
lzip, I wanted to know more. Now, thanks to your explanations, I know more
about this topic.

> Debian is the last project that you should wait for to make a decision
> like this.  We're very unlikely to adopt lzip as a native upstream tarball
> format until it is in very widespread use elsewhere.  (That's the pattern
> followed with previous formats except for lzma, and I think our somewhat
> premature adoption of lzma support is now seen as a mistake we shouldn't
> repeat.)  We are *extremely* conservative about source package formats
> because, once we adopt one, we have to support it for nearly forever;
> phasing one out again is quite difficult.

I think lzip is presently quite (maybe not “very”) wide spread. I wish that
when the moment lzip has enough use comes, you will make a decision
and will support lzip.

Thanks for all,

Maria Bisen