Use of xz instead of gzip

[Chris Rees]

On 10 Aug 2011 13:53, "Julian H. Stacey" <jhs at berklix.com> wrote:
>
> > I can see this presenting a problem on 7.x (and earlier, but they are
> > no longer supported) because the base system shouldn't have dependencies
> > on ports.  The options would seem to be:
> > 1) Stick with gzip for 7-src and earlier (as well as ports until 7.x
> >    goes EOL)
>
> (Not that I'm suggesting for or against Option 1, but it needs modifying,
> Applying the same logic, append to Option 1: "as well as cvs-cur"
>        (as cvs can be used to extract eg 4 & ports & doc as well as head).
> As the ctm collection comprises:
>         cvs-cur ports-cur src-4 src-5 src-6 src-7 src-8 src-cur
> Option 1 thus becomes "Stick with gzip for all except src-8 & src-cur"
>
> Whether a CTM src-stable stream is EOL is irrelevant.
> All that matters is whether extractor hosts have xz or not.
>  One does not need to run ctm on same `uname -r` as one extracts for,
> eg my CTM extractor runs on 8.3, but I extract for all of
>        cvs-cur ports-cur src-4 src-5 src-6 src-7 src-8 src-cur
> Some (4, maybe 6) have long been EOL, but I use them for reasons beyond
> remit of this thread.
>
>
> > 2) Make ctm a port (so it can have a dependency on xz)
>
> I cant imagine many CTM users saying "please kick CTM out of src/" ;-)
>
>
> > 3) If dispensation is granted,
>
> Dispensation for what ?
>
>
> >    ensure the dependency is documented in
> >    UPDATING and ctm.1 when it is MFC'd to 7.x and before.
>
> Man ctm says: "The ctm command appeared in FreeBSD 2.1"
> In theory someone could be extracting on a really old host ?
> We might be lucky & find all people are extracting on 8.x ?
> We won't know unless we ask,
> Stephen could request on ctm-announce@ eg:
>  "People extracting CTM on old systems are requested to run
>        uname -r
>  & if not 8.something-RELEASE or current, report to .... at ....
>
> Personaly, I'd think an acceptable middle course could be to switch to
> whatever reduces the CTM bandwidth the most & put a note in man ctm:
>        "If running FreeBSD-x or earlier you need to
>         cd /usr/ports/archivers/xz ; make install"
>

How does a manpage entry help? It'll only appear on later versions, where
It's irrelevant, and not appear on earlier versions, where it would help!
Perhaps a note could be put into the Handbook entry?

Chris