On Fri, Apr 26, 2013 at 03:21:43PM +0200, Laszlo Kajan wrote: > Dear FTP Masters! > > On 23/04/13 15:13, Benjamin Drung wrote: > [...] > > You can use xz for the source and binary package to reduce the size. The > > default compression level for xz reduces the size of the source tarball > > from 415 MB to 272 MB: > > > > $ ls -1s --si metastudent-data_1.0.0.tar* > > 823M metastudent-data_1.0.0.tar > > 381M metastudent-data_1.0.0.tar.bz2 > > 415M metastudent-data_1.0.0.tar.gz > > 272M metastudent-data_1.0.0.tar.xz > > $ ls -1sh metastudent-data_1.0.0.tar* > > 784M metastudent-data_1.0.0.tar > > 363M metastudent-data_1.0.0.tar.bz2 > > 396M metastudent-data_1.0.0.tar.gz > > 259M metastudent-data_1.0.0.tar.xz > > Following Benjamin's suggestion and the data.debian.org document [1], we have > prepared a 'metastudent-data' arch:all package that is ~130MB (xz > compressed). > The package builds required architecture dependent databases in the postinst > script. The purpose of this is to save space in the archive that > each architecture dependent version would take up. [...]
Does this mean that installing the package results in having two uncompressed copies of the data on disk? If so, wouldn't it be better to do: 1. Compress the database (with xz). 2. Build the package without compression (contents are already compressed so re-compressing would be a waste of time). 3. In postinst, decompress and convert the database to native. However, I would expect the vast majority of installations to be on amd64, so if you always generate a 64-bit little-endian database and avoid duplicating when installing on such a machine then it would be better for most users (not so nice for others). (Incidentally, arch:all packages generating arch-specific data have interesting interactions with multi-arch. I doubt many people with multi-arch systems would want this package to generate multiple versions of the database, but you never know...) Ben. -- Ben Hutchings We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking. - Albert Camus -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130426224644.gf2...@decadent.org.uk