Re: compress files patch for mac/make-package

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Romain Francoise <address@hidden>
> Cc: address@hidden
> Date: Wed, 19 Oct 2005 22:16:01 +0200
> 
> Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> > First, there are some .el files that don't have a corresponding .elc
> > file; I think such .el file should not be compressed, since then Emacs
> > will not work without gzip being available.
> 
> That's pretty obvious...

But wasn't mentioned in the discussion; I wanted to be sure it's not
forgotten in the en-masse compression.

> > Second, I think this compression should not be done on non-Posix
> > systems where gzip is not available.
> 
> How would you compress files on systems where gzip isn't available
> anyway?

Sorry, I wasn't clear enough: I meant that the files should not be
compressed on systems where gzip isn't part of the default
installation, even if the specific machine where "make install" runs
happens to have gzip.

> > And third, I think that we should not compress as part of tarring the
> > distribution.
> 
> make-dist and `make install' are completely independent.

I know.  Still, I wanted to be sure this is understood and agreed
upon.

> (Besides, compressing the .el files inside the tarball would make the
> compression less efficient and result in a bigger tarball.)

That's not the important aspect; the important aspect is that
compressing .el files in the distribution prevent users of some
systems from having access to the sources of Emacs parts written in
Lisp, which I think goes against the GNU license.