On Mon, Jul 03, 2017 at 12:38:59PM +0100, Thomas Pircher wrote: > Hi Maria, > > in the example you mentioned upstream have added xz to the set of archives > they distribute their source in. Currently[1] the GNU Octave source code is > being distributed as .gz, lz and .xz tarballs. > > I don't get it; what exactly is the problem when upstream distributes their > source in multiple formats, including .xz and .lz, among others? > > Thomas > > [1] https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/octave/
Looking at the timestamps, it appears starting with 4.2.0, only gz and lz was provided, and again for 4.2.1 that was the case, and then in the middle of June this year (so some 7 months after the 4.2.0 release) someone went and added xz archives as well, probably because they used to have them, and someone asked to keep having them. So they used to be gz and xz only, then went to gz and lz only, and then later had xz added back again so they now have 3 types. Seems good in the end. No idea what compression options were used, but certainly the lz looks a good chunk smaller than the xz for those archives. -- Len Sorensen
