Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1751048AbWIYPsu (ORCPT ); Mon, 25 Sep 2006 11:48:50 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751054AbWIYPst (ORCPT ); Mon, 25 Sep 2006 11:48:49 -0400 Received: from terminus.zytor.com ([192.83.249.54]:29396 "EHLO terminus.zytor.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751044AbWIYPst (ORCPT ); Mon, 25 Sep 2006 11:48:49 -0400 Message-ID: <4517FA12.1010300@zytor.com> Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2006 08:47:30 -0700 From: "H. Peter Anvin" User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.7 (X11/20060913) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Paulo Marques CC: Michael Tokarev , Johannes Stezenbach , Jan Engelhardt , Lennart Sorensen , 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> <45130792.9040104@zytor.com> <20060922140007.GK13639@csclub.uwaterloo.ca> <4514103D.8010303@zytor.com> <20060922174137.GA29929@linuxtv.org> <451426C9.9040002@zytor.com> <4514292C.5000309@tls.msk.ru> <45142AF1.1090806@zytor.com> <4517C2CC.4070900@grupopie.com> In-Reply-To: <4517C2CC.4070900@grupopie.com> 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: 1349 Lines: 35 Paulo Marques wrote: > H. Peter Anvin wrote: >> Michael Tokarev wrote: >>> [...] >>> On the site it's said lzma(sdk) is under rewrite to support >>> new format with magic number and crc checks... >> >> That is an absolute must, IMO. I would use the gzip format as a base. > > If you're suggesting a gzip like format (but with different magic, > etc.), that's ok. > > However, it has been suggested on similar threads to use the CM field of > the gzip format to introduce different compression methods. > > While this is the purpose of this field, I find this to be a very bad > idea. The worse part of it is that, after "lzma gzip" files start to > proliferate, you never know if you can decompress a .gz with your > version of gunzip, which is something that you currently have for granted. > > If more formats start being supported inside gzip, this only gets worse... > Doesn't mean that one should name the files .gz. A more significant reason to not do this is that I think there are a lot of programs out where which only check the magic number and not the compression format. -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/