On 6 September 2016 at 23:31, Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> wrote:
On 09/05/2016 10:38 PM, Jon Skeet wrote:
The "tried and tested" compression formats (gzip, zip, even bzip2)
If the overriding goal is a compression format that works everywhere now, then gzip is clearly the way to go, as we're already using it and all other formats are therefore more likely to cause a problem on some platform somewhere.
Luckily, though, that's not an absolute goal. Although lzip format is not everybody's preference, this is also true for other compression formats, and lzip is a reasonable choice for problems that the new distribution attempts to address.
So whose preference *is* lzip? You've seen a number of us express our dissatisfaction - who actually benefits from this? Sure, it means downloading slightly less data - but whose priority is that, whose "absolute goal"? We've already agreed that this is aimed at developers rather than end users - and I and others (as developers) have expressed our preference for gzip (or zip or bzip2). Who has expressed a significant preference for lzip, out of the target audience?
Our continuing to distribute gzip-format tarballs will address backwards-compatibility concerns.
Yes, those of us who prefer a compression format which is widely supported within programming languages can use the existing distribution format - but can't take advantage of any of the benefits of the new format. Why not bring the benefits of the new format to more people?
Besides, it's not like this is our first rodeo. We formerly used Lempel-Ziv format, and switched to gzip format before gzip was nearly-universally installed and supported.
I don't see that that's any argument for changing now. One option I'll repeat as it seems to have been missed: distribute multiple formats. If there's already going to be the backwards-compatible gzip files and the new lz file, why not *also* have a new gzip file? Jon