Package: p7zip-full Version: 9.20.1~dfsg.1-3 Severity: wishlist
The manual pages of 7z and 7za are practically identical, except that in 7za's manpage, occurences of "7z" in 7z's manpage were substituted by "7za", understandably. The only other difference in the second paragraph of the DESCRIPTION section. 7z has:
7z uses plugins to handle archives.
while 7za has:
7za is a stand-alone executable. 7za handles less archive formats than 7z.
Ignoring implementation details, this does show that 7z and 7za are functionally different, and shows that 7z has advantages, but it fails to show any advantage of 7za. However, 7za and 7z are shipped in the same binary package, so presumably 7za has an advantage of 7z. Is it more performant? More stable or something?
I had no idea, so I tried looking at the Windows situation. Apparently, 7-Zip has, other than graphical executables, only 7z.exe. There is 7za, but in a different package. 7za appears to be designed for systems without package management, so that you can just have an easily copyable and robust executable.
So, does it make any sense to ship 7za in a binary package that already contains 7z? If so, please explain the advantage of 7za.
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