Re: Linux Kernel Source Compression

Alistair John Strachan
2006-05-21T21:22:05Z

On Sunday 21 May 2006 22:00, Chris Wedgwood wrote:
> On Sun, May 21, 2006 at 08:03:32PM +0100, Alistair John Strachan wrote:
> > Somebody needs to make lzma userspace tools (like p7zip) faster, not
> > crash, and behave like a regular UNIX program. Then we need a patch
> > to GNU tar to emerge, and for it to persist for at least 4
> > years. Then maybe people will adopt this format..
>
> why?
>
> the gains aren't that great

If it was less than 5%, I'd agree with you. The fact is, it's 17% better on a
regular kernel tarball (not exactly a contrived test), so there would be
reason to use it. It's also faster to decompress.

http://tukaani.org/lzma/

This utility appears to address most of my original concerns (i.e., it works
with stream LZMA and has a bzip2/gzip-esque frontend). I could see LZMA
replacing bzip2, but not gzip, due to the compression performance issues.

--
Cheers,
Alistair.

Third year Computer Science undergraduate.
1F2 55 South Clerk Street, Edinburgh, UK.