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    SubjectRe: [kernel.org users] XZ Migration discussion
    On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 08:23:57PM +0100, Jean Delvare wrote:
    > > It's probably worth keeping things like the .gz files around, if nothing
    > > else for older distros, systems, etc that don't have xz yet (since it's
    > > still relatively new)
    >
    > Hardly a good reason IMHO. xz can be installed on these systems. When
    > we switched to git, nobody had it and it did not stop us.

    I don't agree, it's different. Git is only used by developers, and even
    not all of them. Sources are a reference. Anyone can download them to
    look for anything. Switching to a specific format which really is not
    common at all on older distros nor on any system looks a bit like
    proprietary encoding eventhough it's not the case. But it's a way to
    tell people that if they want the sources in clear text form, they
    first have to find a tool capable of decompressing them. Gzip is well
    defined as a standard, it's even described in an RFC and is present
    on almost any system (unix or not) now. Any student who wants to take
    a look at the kernel will have access to gunzip, even from an old
    Solaris 8 workstation or a Windows XP desktop PC. XZ if far from
    being there, and the student will not necessarily be able to install
    it. And Peter raised some valid points about the hardware requirements
    to run such tools ; I'm not sure the guys running Linux on their old
    Sparc-2 would like XZ only a lot.

    Regards,
    Willy



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