Re: xz for the new release tip

On 10/01/2009 08:19 AM, Mark Kettenis wrote:
>> Date: Wed, 30 Sep 2009 22:28:57 +0200
>> From: Jan Kratochvil<jan.kratochvil <at> redhat.com>
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> while currently the sources are release both as .tar.gz and as .tar.bz2 would
>> not it be worth to start using .xz as a replacement for the .bz2 variant?
>>
>> 13406892 bytes: gdb-6.8.91.20090930.tar.xz  (xz -9)
>> xz -dc:    real	0m1.226s user	0m1.190s sys	0m0.037s
>>
>> 18453837 bytes: gdb-6.8.91.20090930.tar.bz2
>> bzip2 -dc: real	0m3.775s user	0m3.755s sys	0m0.019s
>
> Never heard of it, so my guess it isn't used widely enough yet to make
> sense.

Well, zz is the successor of lzma.

It's supported as "dist compression" by modern autoconf's 
(autoconf-2.64), it's the internal compression being used in rpm on 
modern Linux distros (Fedora, openSUSE), etc.

Whether it's stable enough and has a longer term perspective is a 
different question or will prove to be a yet another temporary anecdote 
in compression tools is hard to tell - doubts are justified, IMHO.

Ralf