Date: Fri, 20 Jun 2003 22:51:00 +0200
From: =?iso-8859-1?Q?J=F6rn?= Engel <joern@wohnheim.fh-wedel.de>
To: Nicholas Wourms <nwourms@myrealbox.com>
Cc: Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@pobox.com>, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
       jmorris@intercode.com.au, davem@redhat.com,
       David Woodhouse <dwmw2@infradead.org>
Subject: Re: [RFC] Breaking data compatibility with userspace bz2lib
Message-ID: <20030620205100.GE22732@wohnheim.fh-wedel.de>
References: <20030620185915.GD28711@wohnheim.fh-wedel.de> <20030620190957.GA19988@gtf.org> <3EF36E2C.3050906@myrealbox.com>
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On Fri, 20 June 2003 16:27:24 -0400, Nicholas Wourms wrote:
> Jeff Garzik wrote:
> >On Fri, Jun 20, 2003 at 08:59:15PM +0200, J?rn Engel wrote:
> >The big question is whether the bzip2 better compression is actually
> >useful in a kernel context?  Patches to do bzip2 for initrd, for
> >example, have been around for ages:
> >
> >	http://gtf.org/garzik/kernel/files/initrd-bzip2-2.2.13-2.patch.gz
> >
> 
> Not to mention the more current ongoing work by Christian Ludwig for 
> 2.4.2x support at:
> 
> http://shepard.kicks-ass.net/~cc/

Hmm, both of them are already behind my work, and I just started this
week. :)

Ok, this isn't fair as I mainly concentrated on the bzlib itself,
jffs2 is likely the easiest user of compression in the kernel.  No
personal offense please.

Jeff didn't copy lib/inflate.c, a horrible hack that has to go, so his
patch is much better from that perspective.  But he kept the bzlib
pretty much verbatim, incl. _WIN32, functions working with FILE* and
so on.  Once you cut all that out, you start to see the real beauty of
the bzlib, it is much nicer than the older zlib.

Still, the blockSize100k part is just plain stupid and should die. 

Oh yes, thanks for the link.  Didn't know that patch.

J?rn

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