Date: Mon, 13 Mar 1995 17:03:32 -0800 From: David Greenman <davidg@Root.COM> To: Steven G Kargl <kargl@troutmask.apl.washington.edu> Cc: phk@ref.tfs.com (Poul-Henning Kamp), freebsd-hackers@freefall.cdrom.com (FreeBSD) Subject: Re: install compressed binary patch Message-ID: <199503140103.RAA00471@corbin.Root.COM> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 13 Mar 95 16:22:59 PST." <199503140023.QAA15989@troutmask.apl.washington.edu>
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>> 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
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