Re: Replace 'pp' with 'prin1' to generate ELPA archive-contents

[Stefan Kangas]

Philip Kaludercic <philipk@posteo.net> writes:

> I have tried out a few different compression algorithms on the archive
> contents generated with `prin1', and it seems that bz2 would give the
> best results -- though in the end there is just a difference of ±2kb:

The main benefit of using gzip is that it's more portable, as it's
almost always installed on any given system.  Given the small file
sizes, that consideration is probably more important than the exact
compression ratio.

> Another thing I just thought of is that HTTP can serve gzip'ed
> content, but unless I am mistaken the elpa.gnu.org server doesn't make
> use of this capability, even though url.el appears to send the right
> header (Accept-Encoding: gzip).  My guess would be that enabling this
> would improve the situation immediately more than any hacking on
> elpa-admin.el/package.el.

Makes sense.  Did you check what melpa.org does about that, BTW?