Re: Linux Kernel Source Compression

Jan Engelhardt
2006-05-23T13:39:05Z

>> >> > Any idea why this wasn't done for bzip2?
>> >>
>> >> Yes, the bzip2 author I have been told was originally planning to do
>> >> that, but then thought it would be harder to deploy that way (because
>> >> gzip is a core utility, and people are nervous about making it larger.)
>>
>> I'd say that concern is valid.
>>
>> >It's a bit of a shame bzip2 even exists, really. It really would be better
>> > if there was one unified, pluggable archiver on UNIX (and portables).
>>
>> Would You Like To Contribute(tm)? :)
>> Whenever a program is missing, someone is there to write it.
>
>I would, but if it's a "valid concern" that gzip is a few hundred KB larger,
>and the community would not graciously receive such work, there's not much
>point, is there? :-)
>
Make it use shared libraries (did I already mention that?)

BTW, "a few hundred KB" is really overestimated if it's just about bzip2:
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 27640 Apr 23 02:20 /usr/bin/bzip2
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 66864 Apr 23 02:20 /lib/libbz2.so.1.0.0
That's not even _one_ hundred KB. Oh, just keep it as .so. :)
And of course, compile with klibc, it has less loader bloat than glibc (as
someone had found out...I think it was Greg.)

Jan Engelhardt
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