Messages in this thread | | | Date | Mon, 22 May 2006 12:10:46 -0700 | From | "H. Peter Anvin" <> | Subject | Re: Linux Kernel Source Compression |
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Alistair John Strachan wrote: > On Monday 22 May 2006 19:58, H. Peter Anvin wrote: > [snip] >> Personally, I would like to suggest adding LZMA capability to gzip. >> The gzip format already has support for multiple compression formats. > > Any idea why this wasn't done for bzip2?
Yes, the bzip2 author I have been told was originally planning to do that, but then thought it would be harder to deploy that way (because gzip is a core utility, and people are nervous about making it larger.)
You'd have to ask him for the details, though.
It *is* true that there is a fair bit of code out there which sees a gzip magic number and expects to call deflate functions on it, without ever checking the compression type field. However, even if there is a need for a new magic number, this can be done within the gzip code, or by forking gzip.
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