On Fri, Jul 07, 2017 at 11:01:12AM -0400, Lennart Sorensen wrote: > On Mon, Jul 03, 2017 at 12:38:59PM +0100, Thomas Pircher wrote: > > in the example you mentioned upstream have added xz to the set of archives > > they distribute their source in. Currently[1] the GNU Octave source code is > > being distributed as .gz, lz and .xz tarballs. > > > > [1] https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/octave/ > > Looking at the timestamps, it appears starting with 4.2.0, only gz and > lz was provided, and again for 4.2.1 that was the case, and then in > the middle of June this year (so some 7 months after the 4.2.0 release) > someone went and added xz archives as well, probably because they used > to have them, and someone asked to keep having them. > > So they used to be gz and xz only, then went to gz and lz only, and then > later had xz added back again so they now have 3 types. Seems good in > the end. > > No idea what compression options were used, but certainly the lz looks > a good chunk smaller than the xz for those archives.
That's because lzip was used with max settings, xz with the defaults. If you want a fair comparison: -rw-r--r-- 1 kilobyte kilobyte 98826240 Jun 16 20:26 octave-4.2.1.tar -rw-r--r-- 1 kilobyte kilobyte 15826565 Jul 7 17:13 octave-4.2.1.tar.lz -rw-r--r-- 1 kilobyte kilobyte 15174400 Jul 7 17:13 octave-4.2.1.tar.xz xz wins by 4.2%, with the same settings. Thus, I'd recommend dropping lzip completely. It's worse and obscure. With every distro having standardized on xz, providing lzip tarballs is a pure waste of space. -- ⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀ ⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ A dumb species has no way to open a tuna can. ⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ A smart species invents a can opener. ⠈⠳⣄⠀⠀⠀⠀ A master species delegates.
