Compressing packages with bzip2 instead gzip?

[Carlos Ribeiro]

On 12/10/05, Timo Jyrinki <timo.jyrinki at hut.fi> wrote:
>
> > That's only an idea though, as I have no access to the
> > central repository to try it myself... (although I could
> > possible try the develop some kind of automated repackagind
> > robot in my own PC).
>
> About the usage of possible space savings: where is it needed? In my
> opinion including all languages' language packs would be the best thing
> to have. I think the limit of the CD size hasn't been a factor in what
> programs are included on the Ubuntu CDs, but the one thing that is
> downloaded from the Internet because of size constraints is the language
> files for most of the not-top-20-spoken languages.


The CD size is always a potential issue. The download time is a big issue
too, because it's multiplied by the number of people that download the
package. In my case, I'm behind a 256 kbps cable modem (which is the usual
connection around here for broadband); under real conditions it takes about
8 hours to download a CD image. Savings of 15% mean more than one hour,
which may not sound a lot but would make difference for me.

The figures for combined language pack files are very promising:
> > .tar.gz:  61,478,589
> > .tar.bz2: 49,982,949
> > .tar.7z:  23,081,869
>
> I think all of the language packs could be included in .tar.7z format
> for the size of the current separate bz2 files.
>
> Doing this only for the langpacks would have the benefit of not messing
> with the whole archive (something Canonical might not want to do for
> Dapper??), but the negative side would be to find a solution to how
> language packs would be compressed "as a whole" on the CD and still have
> a way to extract separate language pack deb:s.
>

That's the real problem - having all language packs inside one single deb
would imply that all languages would be installed at once. I don't think
that we'll find an easy way around this one.

--
Carlos Ribeiro
Consultoria em Projetos
blog: http://rascunhosrotos.blogspot.com
blog: http://pythonnotes.blogspot.com
mail: carribeiro at gmail.com
mail: carribeiro at yahoo.com
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