Re: Supporting compression-less release builds

[Julio Merino <jmmv%NetBSD.org@localhost>]

On Sat, Jan 18, 2025 at 08:47:31PM +0100, Ignatios Souvatzis wrote:
> 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. 

Ah, thanks for confirming. So kernels need to be able to remain gzipped.

-- 
Julio Merino