Bug#188408: dpkg: Keep the status/available lists compressed with gzip

[Richard van der Hoff <richard@rvanderhoff.org.uk>]

I've been looking into this, as it's been a problem for me this week. A 
solution doesn't seem too hard; I think I might create a patch which 
implements this (configurable, of course).

A couple of questions for the maintainers before I do so: first, could 
you confirm this seems like a sensible idea. Second, is there any issue 
with having dpkg depend on zlib1g?

Thanks,

Richard van der Hoff