From: pmacdona@sanjuan (Peter MacDonald) Subject: Re: SLS, why don't you use gzip for compression ? Date: Thu, 14 Jan 1993 06:44:29 GMT
In article <C0tIvq.LFL@news.cso.uiuc.edu> jliddle@mrcnext.cso.uiuc.edu (Jean Liddle) writes:
>In article <C0r8Kz.CDn@ibg1.ibg.sub.org> ado@ibg1.ibg.sub.org (Christoph Adomeit) writes:
>>Hi SLS-Makers,
>>
>>why don't you use gzip for compression of your Disks ?
>>As long as gzip is on the distribution I don't see any compatibility-
>>problems.
>
>Forgive him father, for he knows not what he does ...
This is not what you think. I am not slowly drawing my sword with
great and deliberate savor as I prepare to hack yet another hapless
victim to shreds...
Actually, I have looked at gzip, and the compression claim *seems*
to be bourne out at 1/3 better than compress. And if GNU is behind
it, there is some weight to it.
Now SLS is tipping the scales at 30 disks (a little bloated), but
there is still more I want to add (smalltalk and some info files
for one). However, I hesitate to add any more to it, because it
is getting to be a little much for most people to handle.
Sooooo....
I will see if it is feasible to convert SLS to use gzip, but four things:
1) compress is about 13k while gzip is about 95K: gzip will
not fit onto the ram disk. Fine, I could make it the first
package, use compress to bring it out, and go from there.
2) This extra size may well be the nail in the coffin of the
2 Meg machine users.
3) SLS may not get much smaller, because I will likely add a number
of things I have been holding back on.
4) gzip appears to be a lot slower, so it will be much less
convenient, especially for me.
It only took me 10 minutes to hack sysinstall into allowing overriding
the compressiong program used (just assuming -dc is used on decompress).
Unfortunately, such a conversion would mean reuploading the whole
thing (again). We'll see, but don't expect it next week.
Peter