From owner-freebsd-hackers Mon Mar 13 17:03:45 1995 Return-Path: hackers-owner Received: (from majordom@localhost) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.10/8.6.6) id RAA03792 for hackers-outgoing; Mon, 13 Mar 1995 17:03:45 -0800 Received: from Root.COM (implode.Root.COM [198.145.90.1]) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.10/8.6.6) with ESMTP id RAA03786 for ; Mon, 13 Mar 1995 17:03:42 -0800 Received: from corbin.Root.COM (corbin.Root.COM [198.145.90.18]) by Root.COM (8.6.8/8.6.5) with ESMTP id RAA09012; Mon, 13 Mar 1995 17:03:33 -0800 Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by corbin.Root.COM (8.6.11/8.6.5) with SMTP id RAA00471; Mon, 13 Mar 1995 17:03:33 -0800 Message-Id: <199503140103.RAA00471@corbin.Root.COM> X-Authentication-Warning: corbin.Root.COM: Host localhost didn't use HELO protocol To: Steven G Kargl cc: phk@ref.tfs.com (Poul-Henning Kamp), freebsd-hackers@freefall.cdrom.com (FreeBSD) Subject: Re: install compressed binary patch In-reply-to: Your message of "Mon, 13 Mar 95 16:22:59 PST." <199503140023.QAA15989@troutmask.apl.washington.edu> From: David Greenman Reply-To: davidg@Root.COM Date: Mon, 13 Mar 1995 17:03:32 -0800 Sender: hackers-owner@FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk >> Wouldn't you gain more diskspace if you told cc(1) about ".gz" files for >> instance ? source compress better than binary I'd expect... > >Actually, make world was a (poor?) example. But, consider the installation >on a production machine of some of the ports. The binary for Octave was over >4 MB before compression. With `gzip -9', the binary is around 750 KB. I get >similar compression for other large binaries. > >The `-z' would be useful perhaps for XFree86 where the site.def(?) file allows >one to specify the install program and install flags (if i recall correctly). >Then, you can automatically have X built with compressed binaries. Keep in mind the following when using gziped binaries: 1) The file is paged from swap, not from the executable. This means you'll need a lot more swap space. 2) There is no sharing with gziped binaries. This means that you'll need a lot more memory (and swap space). 3) Decompression requires a lot of CPU. Those three reasons make it impractical to gzip binaries that will be used often or ones where multiple copies are used concurrently (like a shell for instance). -DG