zstd compression for packages

[Julian Andres Klode]

On Mon, Mar 12, 2018 at 01:49:42PM +0000, Robie Basak wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 12, 2018 at 11:06:11AM +0100, Julian Andres Klode wrote:
> > We are considering requesting a FFe for that - the features are not 
> > invasive, and it allows us to turn it on by default in 18.10.
> 
> libzstd has only been stable in the archive since Artful. We had to SRU
> fixes to Xenial because it was added to Debian (and outside
> experimental) before the format was stable upstream.
> 
> Of all the general uses of a new compression algorithm, I'd expect our
> distribution archival case to be near the end of a develop/test/rollout
> cycle. Are you sure we want to rely on it so completely by switching to
> it by default in 18.10?

So the goal is to have it in 20.04, which means we should ship it now, so
we can do upgrades from 18.04 to it. Whether we change the default in
18.10 or not, I don't know, but:

IMO, better 18.10 than later. We should gain experience with it,
and if it turns out to be problematic, we can switch the default back
and do no-change rebuilds for 20.04 :)

That said, if we have problems, I expect people using zstd in filesystems
(btrfs) or backup tools (borg) to be off worse.

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