Date: Sat, 9 Jan 2010 16:47:11 -0500 From: "b. f." <bf1783@googlemail.com> To: andrew clarke <mail@ozzmosis.com> Cc: kientzle@FreeBSD.org, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: pkgtools and xz compressor Message-ID: <d873d5be1001091347n2adcfc33s86238138a2600d95@mail.gmail.com>
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>I notice FreeBSD 7.2's pkg_add, pkg_create, etc don't have support for >the xz compressor, evidently due to lack of support for the xz format >in bsdtar. Does bsdtar support xz in FreeBSD 8.0? Failing that, is >xz support for the pkgtools something being looked at in future? > Yes, we know, we know. :) No, FreeBSD 8.0 does not have support for lzma compression in it's base system libarchive, although there are several ports that support it, and it could be handled by using one of them, as is done with the current USE_ZIP knob. The latest version of libarchive (imported recently into 9-CURRENT, from http://code.google.com/p/libarchive/ ) has support for lzma compression in several formats, as well as other improvements. Unfortunately, the imported version of libarchive still has lzma disabled by default, and no supporting lzma libraries were imported. You would have to ask kientzle@ why this is so. >xz's compression ratios tend to be much better than bzip2's, eg. Yes, and with faster decompression, albeit at the cost of more memory and cpu usage. But, unfortunately, portmgr@ does not seem interested in incorporating these improvements. If I recall correctly, there are one or more open PRs suggesting means of adding support, but they have been largely ignored. Some time ago, the maintainer of one widely-used port switched it over to an lzma-compressed tarball, and received a lot of criticism for doing so, including some from key committers who evidently didn't even know what lzma was. Ultimately, he had to revert to a bzip2-compressed tarball. So it may be a while before this is widely used in ports. b.
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