Re: Future autoconf package compression

[Bob Friesenhahn]

On Sat, 24 Nov 2012, Marko Lindqvist wrote:

> On 2 March 2012 06:45, Eric Blake <address@hidden> wrote:
> > The Autoconf team is considering releasing only .xz files for 2.69; if
> > this would be a hardship for you, and you need the .gz or .bz2 release,
> > please speak up now.
>
> I just encountered new argument for providing .gz of autoconf also in
> the future.

There is no tangible benefit offered to the world by removing the 
gzip-compressed autoconf package.  Xz is excessively complex, 
excessively large, and has limited portability and stability compared 
with gzip.

The XZ Utils project obviously has issues.  As an example, I clicked 
on the NEWS link offered by its web site (http://www.tukaani.org/xz/) 
to see what has changed and saw this 
"http://git.tukaani.org/?p=xz.git;a=blob;f=NEWS;hb=HEAD";.  Further 
investigation reveals that its git repository has vaporized.

If the autoconf project desires to offer benefit to the world based on 
package sizes, there is much more to be gained by reducing the bloat 
that Autoconf configure and support scripts add to the thousands of 
packages which depend on it.

Bob
--
Bob Friesenhahn
address@hidden, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer,    http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/