On Sun, Sep 03, 2000 at 11:49:32PM -0300, Nicol?s Lichtmaier wrote: > > > > > Speed reasons - gzip is significantly faster than bzip2, which matters > > > > > for old ix86 (x=3,4) and m68k machines which run Debian. > > > > > > > > bzip2 also uses more memory which can be an issue with lowmemory > > > > systems. > > > > > > I had a 486 with 8Mb and with `bzip2 -s' I could use bzipped packages > > > perfectly... are we talking about 4 Mb mechines? > > Do you realize how much ram dpkg itself already takes up? Add that to > > bzip2 and you are definitely swapping, even with 8 megs of RAM. Heck, > > doing this, and you need 16megs *free* physical memory just to keep from > > swapping. As for 4 meg machines, the current gzip setup is almost > > unbearable just for that (believe me, I have an 8 meg system, and I don't > > want to even imagine a 4 meg system trying to handle dpkg, much less > > dpkg+bzip2). > > Uhm.. you are right. But it could still be used for Packages.gz and for the > source package. Many packages are now being packaged in bz2 upstream (eg. > lftp, one of mine)...
For Sources and Packages that's fine, IMO, but your assertion about source packages is a little misleading. apt-get source for gcc and glibc[1]. Check the tarballs internally. You'll notice they are .tar.bz2. This is done with little loss of space over straight .bz2. A new format and hacking is not needed for you to use this already (packages doing this need to Build-Depend on bzip2). Ben [1]: Also check openldap, shadow and pam for the same style setups. Yes, it's sort of a hack, but it's a clean hack and the system provides much more than a way to package up .bz2 tarballs. -- -----------=======-=-======-=========-----------=====------------=-=------ / Ben Collins -- ...on that fantastic voyage... -- Debian GNU/Linux \ ` [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] ' `---=========------=======-------------=-=-----=-===-======-------=--=---' -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
