Hi! On Tue, 2024-09-24 at 15:58:10 +0200, Mark Brown wrote: > In the past I've pushed back on doing anything here since zlib is > essential and it seemed better to be consistent over the ecosystem than > to use a more niche implementation, and some of the early optimisation > efforts had not worked well on CPUs other than their immediate targets. > However given the user feedback and looking at the Fedora experience I > think it might be time to reevaluate that.
Great! I'm happy to hear that. > Obviously it's far too late to do anything with the default for trixie, > we might want to evaluate doing something after the release but for now > it's too late. Personally I don't think it's too late, there should be several months until the freeze, and I think if we wanted to switch we could perhaps do a staged transition and see how it goes and only do the final replacement if everything seems fine. > There's been some ongoing discussion (which sadly I wasn't looped into > most of) of zlib-ng in WNPP: > > https://bugs.debian.org/1002056 > > with some packaging done, but not AIUI building the zlib compatible ABI > for zlib-ng yet which would allow it to be used as a replacement. > Adding support for the compatible ABI allowing it to be an alternative > for standard zlib seems to me like an obvious step we could take, it > would need a lot of care given that zlib is essentially but would let > people get zlib-ng if they wanted, and if there are problems it can be > held in unstable (or experimental) to avoid impact on trixie. This > would allow people to kick the tires. Sorry, I've been meaning to bring this up again to your attention, given that as you mention zlib-ng has seen steady development and buy in from the community at large. But at the same time, I've been both a bit reluctant to upload anything to avoid the impression of some kind of attempt to a hostile takeover, and to bring this up to you as from your earlier push back I thought that would require some (perhaps) exceeding changed circumstances. But given your mail, I'm happy to work on this again and start with say uploading some initial stuff into experimental for example, after this thread settles a bit? (I'll start by refreshing the packaging first though.) > Does anyone have thoughts on this? Personally, I think fully migrating from zlib to zlib-ng would sound great (even for trixie), but I guess we can take it slow if you do not feel confident or have concerns over this. Also if you'd prefer to take over the zlib-ng ITP, as a continuation of zlib, that'd seem fine with me too. Thanks, Guillem
