On Tue, 18 Aug 2009, Jonathan Nieder wrote: > I have been working on packaging XZ Utils, which is supposed to > eventually supersede LZMA Utils. To that end, it provides “lzma”, > “unlzma”, etc commands for compatibility with lzma, but scripts and > other programs are encouraged to use “xz” directly when possible. > > Would it be possible for dpkg to detect whether xz is on the $PATH, > and if so, use that instead of lzma? > > The motivation is the following: > > * Some users may want to install XZ Utils without the legacy commands > (by installing xz-utils but not xz-lzma nor lzma). dpkg should still > work for such users.
Why would it not work? Do you have a plan to remove the current lzma source package? If yes, why not let xz utils take over the lzma binary package as a direct replacement? > * Without this change, switching between lzma and xz-lzma is > impossible, since it requires being without the pseudo-essential > package lzma for a few moments. With this change, switching between > lzma and xz-lzma would work fine as long as xz-utils is installed. What would you put in the Pre-Depends field to ensure this? lzma | xz-utils | xz-lzma ? Other questions: - instead of replacing current lzma support, wouldn't it be more interesting to add full xz support? As I understand it, the format evolved/improved and it would be interesting for dpkg to be able to use it (and not only the old lzma one). - do you have a libxz that can be used instead of requiring the command line interface? if no, is one planned in the future? The library would be interesting as we can then avoid the predependency and maybe use libxz to support both lzma and xz. BTW, in your third patch, you look for "sz" in the path instead of "xz". I think Guillem will comment as well, as he probably has more hindsights than me on this issue. Cheers, PS: Next time please just put patches as attachment in a single mail instead of mailing them separately. -- Raphaël Hertzog -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected]
