Re: Supporting compression-less release builds

[Ignatios Souvatzis <is%netbsd.org@localhost>]

hi,

On Sat, Jan 18, 2025 at 04:33:19PM +0000, Julio Merino wrote:

> In particular, there seem to be at least three things at play:
> 
> * Release sets. These already have knobs for configuration.
> * Disk images. Compressed with gzip unconditionally.
> * Kernels. Compressed with gzip unconditionally.
> 
> I do not know if there are good reasons for these differences, although
> I sense there aren't, and the reason sets support xz is because that's
> what made the most difference in final artifact sizes.

(At least some) boot-loaders can boot gzip-compressed kernels
directly.  This is convenient for checking whether hardware Y would
survive a kernel upgrade.... I think those loaders do not know how
to handle xz and might not have the resources doing that.

So while there's an argument for xz for the sets, I argue for
the simpler compression method for kernels. 

Regards,
	-is