Mike Gerdts wrote: ... > - How compressible is bytecode compared to uncompiled code? That is, > once it is put into a compressed disk image format, how much space is > really being saved? >
All of Mike's points are well-taken, especially this one. An argument that "it might help the Live CD" without data to back it up is not going anywhere. Essentially all of the contents of the live CD are compressed in one way or another already, be it by lofi (using lzma) for the major parts that stay on the media, or gzip (or dcfs) for the root archive, so proposing to compress them by other means is relatively unlikely to lead to actual observed benefit. I'll further add that, in at least some instances, we've actually seen adverse impacts based on some of the recent projects. For example, the recent conversion of cut(1) and other objects to ksh93 built-ins actually increased the size of the ramdisk required on SPARC by a couple of megabytes. Whether its other benefits outweigh this cost is something to contemplate. At this point, I believe the decision to close this bug was absolutely correct. Presenting contradictory data, not opinions, is the way to move this forward. BTW, if anyone wants to propose ideas for how to save space on the live CD or memory in its execution environment, I really encourage engaging directly with me and my team (caiman-discuss at opensolaris.org); unless you are well-versed in how the live CD is constructed, any assumptions are likely wrong. Dave
