Re: lzip support

[Jim Meyering]

Jan Engelhardt <address@hidden> wrote:
> On Saturday 2008-11-29 10:06, Jim Meyering wrote:
>>Jan Engelhardt <address@hidden> wrote:
>>> On Friday 2008-11-28 17:21, Bob Friesenhahn wrote:
>>>> Since LZIP support has appeared apparently out of the blue (no
>>>> prior discussion on this list), and Automake already had LZMA
>>>> support, can someone please explain LZIP vs LZMA and why we now
>>>> have at least two LZMA compressed targets?
>>>
>>> See http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/lzip-bug/2008-11/msg00003.html ,
>>> I think this should answer it.
>>
>>But nothing I saw there mentioned the upcoming (and superior)
>>xz format/tool (aka lzma-utils' unstable branch).  That is what's on
>>the current head of the "master" branch of the lzma-utils git tree.
>>
>>    git://ctrl.tukaani.org/lzma-utils.git
>>
>>xz is the name of the new tool as well as the corresponding suffix.
>>Lasse Collin says there may well be a beta release this year.
>
> Nothing has happened since at least July when I inquired. I mean, it is
> not that hard to add the two features, magic byte string and checksum,
> is it? (IMHO the format should have had these from the beginning even.)

"Nothing has happened" ?
Did you look at the code at all, or ask Lasse?

    $ git log --since=2008-07-01 -p|diffstat|tail -1
     416 files changed, 14731 insertions(+), 13348 deletions(-)

>>I have been following lzma-utils development closely for some time,
>>and my impression is that xz obviates lzip.  I would not want to
>>encourage use of lzip without a convincing argument to the contrary.
>>
>>As soon as there's a beta xz release (i.e., stable format),
>>I'll be switching from .lzma to .xz suffixes for all tarballs I create.
>>
> lzip is (marked as) stable now, it was enough waiting for lzma.

I see xz as the right format and tool, so prefer not to
encourage the use of any other new tool to do the same job.