Re: distribute xz-compressed tarballs, too?

[Jim Meyering]

Bruno Haible wrote:
>> Have you considered distributing xz-compressed tarballs for gettext?
>> They would be about half the size of the gzip-compressed ones:
>
> True, but it would need 50% more disk space on the ftp server and each
> of its mirrors.

Disk space it not the issue.  As you say, it is very inexpensive, now.
However, network bandwidth is not.

> Then, it requires educating the users about what kind of file this is
> and with which tools they should unpack it:

Users already know ;-)
Some tools now distribute *only* xz-compressed tarballs,
and virtually no one complained or even asked questions.

>   - The 'file' command from not too long ago does not know about this format:
>     $ file gettext-0.18.1.*

Some tools/vendors lag (but it works for me in F13).
IMHO that's no reason not to use it.

>     gettext-0.18.1.tar.gz: gzip compressed data, from Unix, last modified: 
> Fri Jun  4 15:02:42 2010, max compression
>     gettext-0.18.1.tar.xz: data
>
>   - The 'tar' program knows about this format only since version 1.22.

While using tar to perform decompression is handy, it's not required.
Those with tar-1.21 (1.5 years old) or older can do this to decompress:

  xz -dc gettext-0.18.1.tar.xz | tar xf -

> The benefit would be marginal:
>   - You get 500 GB disks for about $ 100 or less nowadays.
>   - Most users have a bandwidth of 100 KB/sec or more. It does not really
>     matter whether a file arrives in 150 sec or 75 sec.

A user may not care, but the owner of the system from which hundreds
of users are downloading may appreciate the difference in bandwidth.

>   - Disk and network hardware is now frequently used for movies, which
>     has file sizes starting at 10 MB and going up to 5 GB.
>   - Distributors are free to repack the tarballs (in fact, Mandriva used
>     .bz2 for everything some time ago).

.bz2 is inferior.  Many distros now use LZMA (xz's format) to compress
the payload in .rpm and .deb files.

If it's what you want, just say "I don't want to use xz".
I can't rebut that ;-)