Mike, I think Charles means that we need tar and gzip equivalents in a interpreter language because that's the compression we use with every package (lrp = tar.gz). Those utilities are needed to install the packages with the linuxrc script inside the initramfs.
Zlib is completely different and would also mean to include the zlib library next to the lua binary inside the initramfs, which is probably much bigger than using the "native" klibc compiled utilities. But we have some options to make things smaller and maybe even use the klibc utilities (if the needed ones are implemented yet). We (Bering-uClibc team) did some testing with read-only fs (romfs) in initrd, instead of minix and lzma compression of initrd and the kernel. It's also possible to use lzma on an initramfs It has some drawbacks, first with a read-only fs in the initial ramdisk (read-only seems to be the only option in initramfs anyway) it isn't possible to populate /dev before the root tmpfs is created. This means that you can't set tmpfs sizes in leaf.cfg anymore, this has to be done in syslinux.cfg (or an other bootloader config file). Secondly, if you use lzma you can't back-up the initrd anymore within a running system. Well you can but the utilities to do this are so big that you will loose the space savings enterily. This will probably also be the case in an initramfs anyway. I remember Charles talking about getting initial modules out of an initramfs so this may become a non issue. But even with those space savings it's possible that the size increase due to a 2.6 kernel and the pre-init utilities makes the image a lot bigger. Well, like I said before there are not much advantages right now but it's definitly something we look at. Eric > On Sun, 2005-08-21 at 04:52, Charles Steinkuehler wrote: > >> Yep...the language is hard to search on (with forth being a very common >> english word), and most of the public code was around in the old >> printed listing and maybe online BBS days. Not a lot in a searchable >> archive form on the 'net. > > Charles, > Is this what you're looking for? > > > Data Compression and Decompression in Tight Places > http://www.programmersheaven.com/zone22/cat208/2252.htm > > > I describe in this report an implementation of a general > purpose data compression/decompression algorithm which is simple, achieves > good compression, and uses few memory resources. File compression > techniques for Forth programmers. > >> | I'll look for lua source next. >> >> >> Good luck! >> > > It looks like lua programmers are using zlib. Lua is able to use C > functions. > > 24 - An Overview of the C API > http://www.lua.org/pil/24.html > > > -- > Mike Noyes <mhnoyes at users.sourceforge.net> > http://sourceforge.net/users/mhnoyes/ > SF.net Projects: leaf, phpwebsite, phpwebsite-comm, sitedocs > > > > > ------------------------------------------------------- > SF.Net email is Sponsored by the Better Software Conference & EXPO > September 19-22, 2005 * San Francisco, CA * Development Lifecycle > Practices > Agile & Plan-Driven Development * Managing Projects & Teams * Testing & QA > Security * Process Improvement & Measurement * > http://www.sqe.com/bsce5sf > > > _______________________________________________ > leaf-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/leaf-devel > > ------------------------------------------------------- SF.Net email is Sponsored by the Better Software Conference & EXPO September 19-22, 2005 * San Francisco, CA * Development Lifecycle Practices Agile & Plan-Driven Development * Managing Projects & Teams * Testing & QA Security * Process Improvement & Measurement * http://www.sqe.com/bsce5sf _______________________________________________ leaf-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/leaf-devel
