Re: Smaller compressed kernel source tarballs?

["H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>]

Paulo Marques wrote:
> H. Peter Anvin wrote:
>> Michael Tokarev wrote:
>>> [...]
>>> On the site it's said lzma(sdk) is under rewrite to support
>>> new format with magic number and crc checks...
>>
>> That is an absolute must, IMO.  I would use the gzip format as a base.
> 
> If you're suggesting a gzip like format (but with different magic, 
> etc.), that's ok.
> 
> However, it has been suggested on similar threads to use the CM field of 
> the gzip format to introduce different compression methods.
> 
> While this is the purpose of this field, I find this to be a very bad 
> idea. The worse part of it is that, after "lzma gzip" files start to 
> proliferate, you never know if you can decompress a .gz with your 
> version of gunzip, which is something that you currently have for granted.
> 
> If more formats start being supported inside gzip, this only gets worse...
> 

Doesn't mean that one should name the files .gz.

A more significant reason to not do this is that I think there are a lot 
of programs out where which only check the magic number and not the 
compression format.

	-hpa