Jan Engelhardt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Saturday 2008-11-29 10:06, Jim Meyering wrote: >>Jan Engelhardt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >>> On Friday 2008-11-28 17:21, Bob Friesenhahn wrote: >>>> Since LZIP support has appeared apparently out of the blue (no >>>> prior discussion on this list), and Automake already had LZMA >>>> support, can someone please explain LZIP vs LZMA and why we now >>>> have at least two LZMA compressed targets? >>> >>> See http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/lzip-bug/2008-11/msg00003.html , >>> I think this should answer it. >> >>But nothing I saw there mentioned the upcoming (and superior) >>xz format/tool (aka lzma-utils' unstable branch). That is what's on >>the current head of the "master" branch of the lzma-utils git tree. >> >> git://ctrl.tukaani.org/lzma-utils.git >> >>xz is the name of the new tool as well as the corresponding suffix. >>Lasse Collin says there may well be a beta release this year. > > Nothing has happened since at least July when I inquired. I mean, it is > not that hard to add the two features, magic byte string and checksum, > is it? (IMHO the format should have had these from the beginning even.)
"Nothing has happened" ? Did you look at the code at all, or ask Lasse? $ git log --since=2008-07-01 -p|diffstat|tail -1 416 files changed, 14731 insertions(+), 13348 deletions(-) >>I have been following lzma-utils development closely for some time, >>and my impression is that xz obviates lzip. I would not want to >>encourage use of lzip without a convincing argument to the contrary. >> >>As soon as there's a beta xz release (i.e., stable format), >>I'll be switching from .lzma to .xz suffixes for all tarballs I create. >> > lzip is (marked as) stable now, it was enough waiting for lzma. I see xz as the right format and tool, so prefer not to encourage the use of any other new tool to do the same job.