Hello Eric and all, > On Wed, Jan 11, 2017 at 3:21 PM, Eric Blake <[email protected]> wrote: >> there are strong arguments for including .lzip >> distributions, either in addition or in place of .xz:
I would ask at least to keep XZ and not switch solely to lzip. While I am in no position to evaluate lzip benchmark/robustness/format claims, I do have some concerns about the lzip program: First, It is written in C++. Not a problem by itself, but seems a bit at odds as a requirement for system-level package like coreutils. Second, I'm not sure how portable and well-tested the program is on the large number of platforms that coreutils aim to cater to. Being a C++ program, I'm not even sure if all these system could easily build it or provide it as package. Third, I'm a bit wary of the closed development model: there is no public git repository, only published tarballs, and not clear how active the development or the community are. Lastly, I think the test suite is a bit lacking, especially compared to all the claims about recovery and robustness of the lzip format. --- I'm not saying 'xz' is perfect or that it answers all the above issues. But it has a "community buy-in" which can't be denied compared to lzip. If coreutils switches, I think it should switch to something that is provably superior not only in benchmark/robustness. Just my 2 cents, - assaf
