*.Deb packages : what compression format does it use ??

[Thomas Beckett]

On Thu, 10 Mar 2005 12:18:34 +0100, Vincent Trouilliez
<vincent.trouilliez at modulonet.fr> wrote:
> I had a look at Gnome's download page :
> http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/platform/2.10/2.10.0/sources/
> 
> and realised that each and every package it is made of, is available in
> two formats : tar.gz and tar.bz2.
> The .bz2 files are consistently 30% smaller than the .gz files. Or, the
> other way around, .gz files are almost 50% bigger than the  .bz2 files,
> rather impressive !!!
> But Ubuntu can open both files without problems. What is the point of
> using .gz format then ? Is it because Gnome is multi-platform, and some
> of them can't open .bz2 files ?
> 
> That got me thinking.. in the Ubuntu repositories, we have .deb
> packages, which are obviously compressed. But what compression format
> do .deb packages use ? I was dreaming... if they use .gz, then by
> using .bz2 instead, we could download the packages 30% faster, wow ! :o)
> 
> Anyone know ??
> 
> --
> Vince
> 
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> ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com
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vince, 

if you take a look at the Hoary Goals:

http://www.ubuntulinux.org/wiki/HoaryGoals

second item shows that bz2 compressed .debs are coming (just one at
the moment i gather from the page). Looks like it is being tested in
Hoary and may well be used as standard in Hoary +1. It would make
downloading faster, but also it would mean that more packages - and
therefore features - can be stuffed onto the once CD which means that
things like mono and beagle may make it into main for next release...

Tom