compressed binaries in packages, for or against?
I was recently mailed about lintian failing on UPX compressed binaries in
packages. UPX is a way to compress binaries on x86 machines in such a way that
they are self decompressing -- i.e. it is transparent to the user.
However, compressed binaries have their own issues. The binary will not be
shared, possible debugging issues, speed concerns on low end hardware where
the gain from compression would be found, etc.
So, I informed the fellow that if he wants UPX to pass lintian he has to get
policy to support it first. The consensus on #debian-devel was that compressed
binaries is a bad idea for Debian to ship and that this should be a user's
choice.
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