On Fri, Nov 19, 2010 at 08:53:12PM +0200, Shlomi Fish wrote: > here is a report on compressing Graph-Easy-0.70.tar with various > compression methods: > > -rw-r--r-- 1 shlomif shlomif 416916 Nov 14 22:23 Graph-Easy-0.70.tar.gz > > -rw-r--r-- 1 shlomif shlomif 329197 Nov 5 12:24 Graph-Easy-0.70.tar.bz2 > -rw-r--r-- 1 shlomif shlomif 270796 Nov 14 22:21 Graph-Easy-0.70.tar.lrz > -rw-r--r-- 1 shlomif shlomif 312844 Nov 5 12:24 Graph-Easy-0.70.tar.xz > > As one can see, there are significant savings in size (and bandwidth) > by switching to .bz2 and .xz. .lrz (see > http://ck.kolivas.org/apps/lrzip/ ) yields even more in its ZPaq > preset, but at the cost of longer compression and even decompression > times, so it's not preferable. My question is: > > 1. Will the CPAN testing and downloading toolchian will handle modules > uploaded as .tar.bz2? (Allow to install them, unpack them, etc.) How > about tar.xz.
Even if it does, there's not much point. bzip2 support is nowhere near universal, and preventing lots of users from using your code would seem to be a poor trade-off for saving an insignificant number of bytes. The *backpan* is so small compared to modern storage that I don't bother with a minicpan any more, I just carry a backpan plus indices around with me all the time on a bit of plastic the size of a postage stamp. As for the others, I've never heard of them. FWIW, there are 166 bzip2 files in my backpan mirror, at least some of which have test results, so yes, the toolchain appears to work for them. The one I bothered to check is also indexed on search.cpan.org, so that important part of the toolchain appears to work with it too. -- David Cantrell | Hero of the Information Age Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
