Control: tags -1 wontfix
Control: user d...@packages.debian.org
Control: usertags -1 dpkg-source dsc-format
On Tue, 2013-01-15 at 22:17:42 +, Julian Gilbey wrote:
> Package: dpkg-dev
> Version: 1.16.9
> Severity: wishlist
>
> It would be nice if dpkg-source could support 7z compressed files.
Hmm, I really do understand the desire and benefit of adding more
compression formats support to dpkg-source, as it avoids having to
repack the original source tarball, and in this way checksums or
upstream signatures are preserved, it might also improve compression
ratio compared to previous supported compressions.
But then the costs of adding support for an additional compression
format are quite high, to the point that those benefits seem small
compared to them. The costs are (at least): increase in the
build-essential set; the new compression becomes part of the source
format forver, as it can never be taken back as old Debian packages
or 3rd-party packages in the wild might be using that format; it's
another (uncommon) package required on non-Debian-based systems to
be able to handle those source packages.
Given the above, that I don't think 7z is widely used to distribute
source (?), and that it does not improve compression ratio over xz,
I'll be tagging this wontfix for now (and probably close after a bit,
as I'm adding this into a new dpkg FAQ on the wiki), note though
that if say, the uptake of 7z in upstream releases would increase
substantally I'd be open to reconsider this.
Thanks,
Guillem
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