Re: support for lzip

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hello Antonio,

* Antonio Diaz Diaz wrote on Thu, Feb 18, 2010 at 07:28:07PM CET:
> As this message contains a patch, I guess this is the right list for it.

Yes, thanks.

> Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
> >>Do you plan to support the creation of lzip-compressed tarballs?
> >>http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/automake/2008-11/msg00076.html
> >
> >Well, to be honest, I regard the addition of lzma support as a mistake
> >in hindsight.  We should have waited and added xz support only, with a
> >stable xz release.  It was also a mistake that I did not deprecate lzma
> >support more prominently in the 1.11 release; will fix that for 1.11.1.
> 
> It seems this has not been fixed in 1.11.1.

Darn.  Thanks for the reminder.

> >In general, adding support for a new compression format Foo to Automake
> >incurs several costs, at least with the current way we do things:
> 
> Given the simplicity of the changes needed (see attached patch), I see
> no reason for not supporting lzip, which some developers[1] already dub
> "the currently best free compression program".
> [1] ftp://ftp.gmplib.org/pub/snapshot/README

Thanks for the patch.  Care to add a ChangeLog entry?

A new feature should be in master first, before it is applied to a
branch.  Since master Automake 'dist' can compress in parallel, the
slowest compressor should be started first; do you have data on how
compression speed of lzip compares with lzma, xz, shar, ...?

Thanks,
Ralf