Re: Proper selection of compression algorithm

["Martin S. Weber" <Ephaeton%gmx.net@localhost>]

On Tue, Feb 02, 2010 at 12:53:07AM +0100, Joerg Sonnenberger wrote:
> Hi all,
> I'm not sure if the discussion about this was public or just at some
> pkgsrcCon or so. The only mechanism currently in place to choose the
> compression algorithm for binary packages is  by changing PKG_SUFX.
> That is clumsy and doesn't really scale. E.g. some FTP server don't
> allow full glob patterns and there is support for XZ on the horizon too.

Could you detail on this, i.e., is the lack of ftp glob support
your motivating reason for making the package suffix static? 

> I would like to stop messing with the package name as the tools no longer
> have to care. I don't mind changing the default to .pkg or whatever at
> some point after phasing in the needed pkg_install changes, but that's a
> side issue. The attached patch basically just allows switching between
> gzip/bzip2/none without changing the name of the package. Comments?

Offering an easier way to choose the compression sounds helpful
to me; changing its suffix to hide this decision doesn't so much.
I consider this a feature -- looking at the filename tells you
which compression was used, and which tool to use to uncompress
it in these cases where you just want part of a binary package, ...

Yes I'm aware that file(1) could tell me. I'm also aware that
at least our tar doesn't care about bzip2 or gzip compression
as -z will take care of it when uncompressing, but others don't.
Also I don't see a need to use file to find out something that
I could know by just looking at the filename. So, summing up,
PKG_COMPRESSION instead of PKG_SUFX: user-friendlier imho;
fixed package suffix: less user-friendly imho. Except the issue
with the ftp server is your motivating concern, then I'd just
grumble and use file(1) to determine compression type when
I need it.

Regards,

-Martin