From owner-freebsd-libh  Wed Nov  1  6:47:10 2000
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To: kientzle@acm.org
Cc: "Daniel C. Sobral" <dcs@newsguy.com>,
	Patrick Bihan-Faou <patrick@rageagainst.com>, libh@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: BOF at BSDCon: FreeBSD Installer, Packages System 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 01 Nov 2000 00:09:12 PST."
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Date: Wed, 01 Nov 2000 08:46:25 -0600
From: Dave Glowacki <dglo@ssec.wisc.edu>
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Tim Kientzle wrote:
> "Daniel C. Sobral" wrote:
> > It would surprise me. I think you are grossly overestimating tar.gz
> > advantage. Anyway, the ports tree is very different from the source tree
> > or the ports sources.
> 
> My earlier numbers used default compression for all tests.
> Using maximum compression for both ZIP and GZip gives different
> numbers, but the same conclusion:
> 
> /usr/ports
> tar.gz size: 7,454,638
> ZIP size:   14,947,231
> 
> If you don't trust my numbers, feel free to try it yourself:
> 
> cd <target dir> && zip -r9 - . | wc
> cd <target dir> && tar -cf - . | gzip -9 | wc

One point I haven't seen anyone else make is that any
compression method wins with more raw data.

If your <target dir> above is /usr/ports, you're unfairly
biasing things in favor of tar.gz.  Individual packages
are *much* smaller than /usr/ports and thus won't get the
same compression rate.  The tar.gz versions will be smaller
because they're compressing the entire package rather than
compressing individual files, but I don't think the savings
will be quite as dramatic, except possibly for mega-packages
like emacs or X11.

> I have written a set of tools to automate the maintenance of link
> directories.  They're really very simple.  Would you like to see them?

Your earlier description sounds a lot like the GNU 'stow' system.
You might want to look at that:

    http://www.gnu.org/software/stow/manual.html



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