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Branden Robinson" To: Russ Allbery Cc: Alejandro Colomar , debian-policy@lists.debian.org, "Dr. Tobias Quathamer" , linux-man@vger.kernel.org, Helge Kreutzmann , Colin Watson Subject: Re: Stop compressing manual pages Message-ID: <20251226030811.6pwpbmgp434l6pd5@illithid> References: <87ms364c05.fsf@hope.eyrie.org> Precedence: bulk X-Mailing-List: linux-man@vger.kernel.org List-Id: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha256; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="go2mtq5oxkuj7ntm" Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <87ms364c05.fsf@hope.eyrie.org> --go2mtq5oxkuj7ntm Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; protected-headers=v1 Content-Disposition: inline Subject: Re: Stop compressing manual pages MIME-Version: 1.0 At 2025-12-25T11:06:34-0800, Russ Allbery wrote: > > Yup, I'd like that policy to change. I've added debian-policy@ to > > this mail (and also linux-man@). > > The rationale in Debian for compressing documentation in general is > for embedded systems and other small installations, and it applies to > just about anything that can be safely compressed (manual pages are > only one example). But this rule also predates such facilities as the > nodoc build profile, and is several decades old and thus predates the > growth in storage size even in small embedded environments that has > significantly outpaced the size of text-adjacent documents. I would > definitely want to get feedback from embedded folks before changing > this rule, but at least at first glance it sounds like a reasonable > request worth considering. I'd add that, in contrast to the mid-1990s when Debian's man page compression policy was promulgated--my recollection is that it was an early, early decision, already in place when I started using Debian in January 1996--transparent compression is now an oft-implemented feature of file systems, including some that are popular in embedded systems, such as JFFS2, where it's been the case for at least 19 years.[1] Further, the selection of compression algorithm and container format has become a popular site for partisan battles over the same.[2][3][4][5][6] Since Debian already generates sufficient partisan battles over issues specific to our practices, it might be advantageous to abandon this one. (Speaking for myself, I find deflate/gzip satisfactory, and I intend to release groff 1.24.0 as a gzipped tape archive.) Adopting this change would enable man-db man(1) to discard the zsoelim(1) tool, simplifying the code base and logic depending on this tool--but I defer to Colin's judgment of how advantageous that'd be. Regards, Branden [1] https://lwn.net/Articles/219827/ [2] https://linuxreviews.org/Comparison_of_Compression_Algorithms [3] https://www.nongnu.org/lzip/xz_inadequate.html [4] https://engineering.fb.com/2016/08/31/core-infra/smaller-and-faster-data-compression-with-zstandard/ [5] https://www.reddit.com/r/archlinux/comments/eiia99/zst_packages_consistently_larger_than_xz/ [6] https://sysdfree.wordpress.com/2020/01/04/293/ --go2mtq5oxkuj7ntm Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc" -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iQIzBAABCAAdFiEEh3PWHWjjDgcrENwa0Z6cfXEmbc4FAmlN/BEACgkQ0Z6cfXEm bc6UXA/6AonpoLrnALyh/OMlJ1N4u4oOlOOds4w2F7qdZxlHXaPgkPVhOKh2jSuL Lh5R0sh98qDRvOmzfDS7YnRE2R2v4eAPWwRtwI/yrCzQNtz0gZ2FBO8ZAC3csSHW g3e3zB5KrDmj7X3/IeF5SmTwtfDJ8SyZU/+NIRbPjn10o5WPxyzKuFWGKEONPsmF DPzuKMOcfTMGZYuPR9OrNMtMoJ8qFF/rdyJAPo2vcD7JFN38DwF5Y1vPTtfM+u69 yDFdBSRwGF9L7p6FyRT3i7Q3A+ZsEDYg1XmHYoekV6OqTb/Of+/E8VrfZNuu3K7P PFeBSCBMak6dYl2Hwn+HFBLGJQPkVA+o2ip8Hs5GcHZkgm4d1oZ6RTYYoBhJXo4p AXJ7cTrW8Rb1Bo8O6tJOP50bRs7gkgOcMvIxZ8aVVh1rDdMI+f6CvB1Pw2j2h9Tm BVZqOPvCVBbGspqroyPkXmMHR4YVdYA4ATLbyeD8SNQBBsRaAASNsqM72EO7LEtE xildhEA/PF7MbwrJhu8Sf21ixDSLIukg2n+056nEHzf9i7XOPH2FzfB53MYMGtPE sDEK0Uy0wvnlvW2BspM4Q6x3dHeZgas0ve4bzamWjVrNf8Mlh9KyBw2vAd1eGtwg O1kL5Zbyj+BnOAdebi1uGkAawYslqf6USmavGRFrbemPSIBUEn4= =fb40 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --go2mtq5oxkuj7ntm--