Re: Using .tar.xz only on ftp.gnome.org (was: install-module / ftp.gnome.org / master.gnome.org)

[Olav Vitters <olav vitters nl>]

On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 02:10:58PM +0000, Alberto Ruiz wrote:
> 2011/3/21 Olav Vitters <olav vitters nl>:
> > Could you expand on the pain?
> 
> Basically most distros won't ship it by default, at least not for now.
> Solaris/RHEL/SLED/CentOS are probably the worst cases here. But also
> custom environments (we are talking about things like glib heavily
> used in embedded...).

RHEL is actually fine. Maybe not installed by default (no idea), but xz
is available on RHEL5 and RHEL6 (main repos, not EPEL).

> I'm not saying these are showstoppers, I am saying that we should give
> them some time to adapt, try to encourage Fedora/OpenSuSE/Ubuntu to
> ship lzma by default would be a good starting point. Letting the
> enterprise guys at least provide packages/repos for it would be nice
> as well.

Ok.

> It is true that people using packages more heavily are the distros and
> jhbuild-ish setups, but they automate their infrastructure in a fixed
> setup anyway so they are not the ones we should worry the most. I'm
> thinking about the casual people trying to build a given tarball from
> some platform and not being able to. Maybe we should actually make a
> difference between packages from the desktop release set and the
> platform/development ones in this regard? (i.e. shipping bzip2/xz for
> things like glib/gtk/vala/gjs and just xz for cheese/gnome-shell/...
> and personal projects?

install-module/ftpadmin doesn't know about core vs desktop. Of course
possible to make exceptions if there is a need; that would need to be
done based on the module name.

I'll ask the gtk+ developers for their thoughts.

Anyone know how can I contact embedded developers/GNOME mobile people?

> Do you think having a .bzip2/.xz transition time would make sense or
> make things any better? Say dual during 3.0 and just .xz for 3.2
> onwards?

Perhaps.. let me get back on that.

ATM I really like to switch to the new script (ftpadmin) before 3.0 as
it correctly handles NEWS files and .0 releases.. But it depends on the
amount of testing can be done beforehand. Busy periods for everyone :)

[..]
> > 6) Xz makes 'install-module' *much* slower; only one format would
> >   alleviate it a bit
> 
> 6 seems a reason not to :-)

hehe. I hope with .xz only that people will set that configure option
which would already create a .xz.

-- 
Regards,
Olav