On 06/13/2015 10:55 AM, Paul Wise wrote: > On Sat, Jun 13, 2015 at 4:23 PM, Thomas Goirand wrote: >> I've been using xz compression for a long time, but I see a big defect >> which is today pushing me to turn it off for the .orig.tar file. The >> issue is that depending on the version of xz-utils, it produces a >> different output. >> >> We use "git archive" within the PKG OpenStack team to generate this >> tarball (which is more or less the same as pristine-tar, except we use >> upstream tags rather than a pristine-tar branch). The fact that xz >> produces a different result makes it not reproducible. As a >> consequence, it is very hard for us to use this system across >> distributions (ie: use that in both Debian and Ubuntu, or in Sid & >> Jessie). We need consistency. >> >> As a friend puts it: >> >> "This is a fundamental problem/defect with xz. This (and a lot of >> other such defects, e.g. non-robustness of xz archives that easily >> lead to file corruption etc) are the reason that there is lzip (and >> which is why gnu.org has, on a technical basis, decided that lzip is >> official gzip-successor for gnu software releases when they come in >> tarballs). >> >> So it'd be super nice to have LZIP support in dpkg, and use that >> instead of xz, archive wide. >> >> Your thoughts everyone? Is there any reason why we wouldn't do that? >> >> Cheers, >> >> Thomas Goirand (zigo) > > It was already rejected by the dpkg maintainers twice. > > https://bugs.debian.org/600094 > https://bugs.debian.org/556960
Reading these bugs, am I right that the archive already supports lzip for the orig.tar file? Because that's my issue: I don't really mind if we use xz for the compression of the .deb files, but I need consistency when generating the orig.tar. Though, I had a try, and it doesn't look like dpkg-source -x supports the .lz format unfortunately. Now, regarding the fact that the maintainer closed the bugs, I see 2 issues the way he did it. 1/ First, he sites the fact that lzip isn't popular enough as the only reason (did I miss another point of argumentation?). Well, it's backed-up by the GNU project as the successor of gzip, and also, I believe Debian is influential enough so that we may not have to care about it. Also, a wise technical choice of this kind shouldn't be driven by a popularity contest. 2/ Guillem wrote "that's at the maintainer's discretion" (ie: to close the bug). Well, here, the whole of Debian is depending on this kind of decision, so I don't agree that this decision is only at the discretion of the maintainer. Therefore, I'm tempted to raise this to the technical committee (putting their list as Cc). Does anyone see a reason why I am mistaking here? Cheers, Thomas Goirand (zigo) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-ctte-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/557cb7ed.3060...@debian.org
