http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=55129
Bug #: 55129
Summary: removal of gcc-core tarballs leads to huge extraction
times
Classification: Unclassified
Product: gcc
Version: 4.7.0
Status: UNCONFIRMED
Severity: major
Priority: P3
Component: regression
AssignedTo: unassig...@gcc.gnu.org
ReportedBy: lxl...@yopmail.com
now that gcc-core and all other tarballs are merged into a single, huge 83 MB
bzip2 tarball, i waste serious time whenever i rebuild my linux distro in qemu.
unpacking the official .bz2 tarball on qemu/mips takes nearly 2 hours (!)
since it is unlikely that i could convince you to go back to the former
distribution strategy, i suggest shipping the tarballs additionally in .xz
format, which is 3-4 times faster to extract.
i compared speeds of the official gcc 4.7.0 bzip2 tarballs vs a .xz version i
made out of the former.
/dev/shm $ cp ~/Downloads/gcc-4.7.2.tar.bz2 .
/dev/shm $ time tar xf gcc-4.7.2.tar.bz2
real 0m19.381s
user 0m18.866s
sys 0m2.616s
/dev/shm $ tar cJf gcc-4.7.2.tar.xz gcc-4.7.2
/dev/shm $ la gcc-4.7.2.tar.xz
-rw-r--r-- 1 roger users 66696632 Oct 29 21:50 gcc-4.7.2.tar.xz
/dev/shm $ la gcc-4.7.2.tar.bz2
-rw-r--r-- 1 roger users 82884636 Oct 29 21:44 gcc-4.7.2.tar.bz2
/dev/shm $ rm -rf gcc-4.7.2
/dev/shm $ time tar xf gcc-4.7.2.tar.xz
real 0m7.410s
user 0m7.225s
sys 0m1.695s
even on this high-end 3.1Ghz system the .xz version is 3 times faster.
since the tarball is also a good bit smaller (66 vs 82 MB, could be further
reduced by using higher compression options), i strongly suggest adding .xz to
the official releases, to accommodate for the heavily increased tarball sizes.
