Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1750965AbWIUVoN (ORCPT ); Thu, 21 Sep 2006 17:44:13 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751612AbWIUVoM (ORCPT ); Thu, 21 Sep 2006 17:44:12 -0400 Received: from terminus.zytor.com ([192.83.249.54]:34712 "EHLO terminus.zytor.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750958AbWIUVoM (ORCPT ); Thu, 21 Sep 2006 17:44:12 -0400 Message-ID: <45130792.9040104@zytor.com> Date: Thu, 21 Sep 2006 14:43:46 -0700 From: "H. Peter Anvin" User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.5 (X11/20060808) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Lennart Sorensen CC: Dax Kelson , Linux kernel , Linus Torvalds Subject: Re: Smaller compressed kernel source tarballs? References: <1158870777.24172.23.camel@mentorng.gurulabs.com> <20060921204250.GN13641@csclub.uwaterloo.ca> In-Reply-To: <20060921204250.GN13641@csclub.uwaterloo.ca> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1540 Lines: 34 Lennart Sorensen wrote: > On Thu, Sep 21, 2006 at 02:32:57PM -0600, Dax Kelson wrote: >> Today as I was watching the linux-2.6.18.tar.bz2 slowly download I >> thought it would be nice if it could be made smaller. >> >> The 7zip program/algorithm is free software (LGPL) and can be obtained >> from http://www.7-zip.org/ and it is distributed with several >> distributions (it is in Fedora Core 6 extras for example). >> > > But after you download it once, you can just get the diff next time. > How is the decompression time on 7zip versus bzip2 and gzip? > 7zip (LZMA) decompresses quickly, and the decompressor text is actually smaller than the equivalent for gzip. Quite nice. What is not nice is the code for the compressor, which is a total mess. I have been holding out on implementing LZMA on kernel.org, because just as zip (deflate) didn't become common in the Unix world until an encapsulation format that handles things expected in the Unix world, e.g. streaming, was created (gzip), I don't think LZMA is going to be widely used until there is an "lzip" which does the same thing. I actually started the work of adding LZMA support to gzip, but then realized it would be better if a new encapsulation format with proper 64-bit support everywhere was created. -hpa - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/