Re: [kernel.org users] XZ Migration discussion

[Pavel Machek <pavel@ucw.cz>]

Hi!

> > > It's probably worth keeping things like the .gz files around, if nothing
> > > else for older distros, systems, etc that don't have xz yet (since it's
> > > still relatively new)
> > 
> > Hardly a good reason IMHO. xz can be installed on these systems. When
> > we switched to git, nobody had it and it did not stop us.
> 
> I don't agree, it's different. Git is only used by developers, and even
> not all of them. Sources are a reference. Anyone can download them to
> look for anything. Switching to a specific format which really is not
> common at all on older distros nor on any system looks a bit like
> proprietary encoding eventhough it's not the case. But it's a way to
> tell people that if they want the sources in clear text form, they
> first have to find a tool capable of decompressing them. Gzip is well
> defined as a standard, it's even described in an RFC and is present
> on almost any system (unix or not) now. Any student who wants to take
> a look at the kernel will have access to gunzip, even from an old
> Solaris 8 workstation or a Windows XP desktop PC. XZ if far from
> being there, and the student will not necessarily be able to install
> it. And Peter raised some valid points about the hardware requirements
> to run such tools ; I'm not sure the guys running Linux on their old
> Sparc-2 would like XZ only a lot.

It is not just student on old workstation. I'm trying to keep Linux
working on spitz PDA and kohjinsha subnotebook. Especially zaurus has
about power of old sparc two... otoh it runs 4 hours on cellphone
battery.
									Pavel
-- 
(english) http://www.livejournal.com/~pavelmachek
(cesky, pictures) http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~pavel/picture/horses/blog.html