Paul Eggert wrote:
please use a compression format that can be handled easily by Windows users as well. For instance, choose a format from the list that 7Zip can handle: http://www.7-zip.org/
Thanks for mentioning the problem. xz format is on 7-Zip's list; it's a tiny bit larger than lzip format for our data (0.3% larger for the draft tzdb tarball) but I suppose portability trumps this minor advantage.
Please, do not use xz for a new distribution format. The xz format is defective. See for example http://www.nongnu.org/lzip/xz_inadequate.html or the note in the third xz test at the bottom of http://www.nongnu.org/lzip/lzip_benchmark.html If a format that 7-Zip can handle is desired, I recommend bzip2 which produces a tzdb tarball a 25% smaller than gzip and only a 9% larger than lzip. Best regards, Antonio.