Bug#39299: [PROPOSAL] permit/require use of bz2 for source packages

[Chris Lawrence <cnlawren@olemiss.edu>]

Package: debian-policy
Version: 2.5.1.0
Severity: normal

A recent report on the debian-cd list indicates that space on the
potato source CDs is very tight (around 10 MB of slack).  We are
virtually certain to exceed this space limitation (and thus enter the
realm of needing at least 3 source discs) unless we improve the
compression of source packages.  While people have raised legitimate
objections to the use of bz2 for compressing binary packages, these
concerns are less relevant to source packages, which are an archival
medium typically used by a relative minority of users and/or build
daemons, the latter of which operate essentially non-interactively.

Therefore, I propose that we permit the use of bzip2 to compress
source package files (.orig.tar and .diff for most packages, .tar for
native packages).  I further propose that the use of bzip2 be
mandatory for newly uploaded source files, and that any existing
source packages in the archive in gzip format exceeding 5 MB of
compressed space be converted upon the freeze for potato.

-- System Information
Debian Release: potato
Architecture: i386
Kernel: Linux humberto 2.2.9 #1 Fri May 28 15:50:02 CDT 1999 i586