Package: vtun
Version: 2.6-7
Severity: minor
Upgrading from vtun 2.6-6 to 2.6-7 gave me:

  /etc/vtund-start.conf has been replaced!
  Please read /usr/share/doc/vtun/NEWS.Debian

However, /usr/share/doc/vtun/NEWS.Debian does not exist: rather there is
a file /usr/share/doc/vtun/NEWS.Debian.gz.

  $ gzip -l /usr/share/doc/vtun/NEWS.Debian.gz
           compressed        uncompressed  ratio uncompressed_name
                  404                 588  36.4% /usr/share/doc/vtun/NEWS.Debian

The uncompressed size 588 bytes is smaller than the smallest possible
block size of ext2/ext3 and I'd guess most filesystems other than
reiserfs, so compressing does not in fact save disk space in most cases.

The small/rare savings in disk space should be balanced against the fact
that compressed files are less convenient to operate on than
uncompressed files.

Looking to Debian policy for guidance (searching for `compress'): §12.3
‘Additional documentation’ suggests that it “should be ...  compressed
... unless it is small”.  It doesn't actually give a threshold for
‘small’, though I suppose 588 bytes qualifies.  It doesn't unambiguously
say that it should not be compressed if it is small.

(Other somewhat-related guidance is that copyright files /must/ not be
compressed, and that changelog files should be compressed even if small,
on the grounds that changelog files are expected to become large over
time.)


Based on the above, I believe that the best resolution of this bug is
not to compress this small NEWS.Debian file; but that either fix is
defensible and acceptable.

pjrm.


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