Bug#39299: [AMENDED PROPOSAL] Permit use of bz2 for source packages
retitle 39299 [AMENDED PROPOSAL] Permit use of bz2 for source packages
thanks
I hereby amend my proposal as follows:
---
The available space and bandwidth available to our FTP server network,
and the space available on individual CDs, is increasingly unable to
meet the demand for their use. It is virtually certain that potato
will require 3 source CDs, and future releases are likely to require
even more 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
uncompress source packages without user intervention.
Therefore, I propose that we permit the use of bzip2 to compress
source package files (.orig.tar for non-native packages, .tar for
native packages). A patch to dpkg-1.4.1.16 is available that
implements this capability as an option. Note that diff files are
still compressed with gzip, even with bzip2 support for tar files
enabled, because few are over 5k in size (compressed).
Furthermore, I propose that the policy document recommend, but not
require, the use of bzip2 compression for large source packages where
this will not compromise the goal of providing "pristine" source.
However, it should be up to individual maintainers to decide whether
the use of bzip2 compression is appropriate in each case.
---
In original form, this proposal was seconded by Goswin Brederlow.
Objections were raised to a requirement for the use of bz2 format, and
thus this proposal makes its use strictly voluntary. As far as I
recall, no objections were raised to permitting the use of bzip2
format if dpkg-dev had the necessary support available. The
functionality is available as a patch, so it should be integrated into
dpkg if there are no objections to this revised proposal.
Chris
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