Re: Import of XZ

[der Mouse <mouse%Rodents-Montreal.ORG@localhost>]

>>> [...] essentially LZW with huge window size and [...]
>> How huge is "huge"?  I'm concerned about small-memory machines [...]
> The default settings (auto-tuning based on available memory at
> compression time) requires 10MB for the decompression.

Ouch.  That puts it into the range of pain for a bunch more machines.
I have a MicroVAX-II that can't take more than 16M (it simply doesn't
have the address lines in the hardware), and, ever since the addon
memory (which appears to be made of unobtanium) fried, my WorkPad ZX
has had only 16 as well.

> I'm not sure if running a "modern" NetBSD without customisation on a
> platform with less than 10MB of free memory is useful other than to
> play around.

I'm not sure it is either - but I'm definitely not sure it's not.

But even if so, do we want people starting to play with NetBSD to have
their introduction be the unpleasant discovery that they can't even
uncompress things?  (Most of them will probably have access to a
machine that can, but from my own experience I know that that can be
quite inconvenient; there have been a few times when I've had to delay
something by *days* for reasons like that.  And even when it's not that
bad, it's still pretty annoying, quite possibly past the "aw, screw it,
I'll play with something that doesn't annoy me like that" point.)

> But please keep in mind that the availability of the tools and
> forcing everyone to use it are separate discussions.

True in theory.  Given all the voices I've heard saying things like
"that MB of disk costs what, $0.000001 at today's prices?", ignoring
all the machines that can't use "modern" disks (and those who would
have to give up eating for the week to afford a $100 disk - and I've
heard from discouragingly many such people even among the good geeks I
share mailing lists with), I have little doubt that someone will decide
to use this to compress all the FTPable sets, or some such, before
long.

Of course, NetBSD may wish to drop support for those people/systems.
But I think that, if so, it should be done overtly, not as a relatively
silent side effect of something like a new compression algorithm.

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