Re: Autoconf distributions and xz dependency

[Jim Meyering]

Bob Friesenhahn wrote:
> This reply should have been sent to the autoconf list rather than
> directly to Eric.  The below is what I sent to Eric:
>
> On Thu, 1 Mar 2012, Eric Blake wrote:
>
>> The Autoconf team is considering releasing only .xz files for 2.69; if
>> this would be a hardship for you, and you need the .gz or .bz2 release,
>> please speak up now.
>
>> From what I have seen (and from its own documentation), the 'xz' 
>> implementation
> is not particularly portable and it requires considerable resources

Hi Bob,

If you can demonstrate a portability problem, please provide details.
>From what I've heard (distributing xz-only compressed tarballs of
coreutils, grep, diffutils, parted, etc.) there have been no
problems building xz from source on the few systems for which it is not
yet available pre-packaged.

> (e.g. memory) so it is unwise to discard the well-supported .gz

I've heard that an embedded system user had trouble using xz
to decompress because their system had only 32MB of RAM and no swap.
However, even in that extreme case I think they found a work-around.

Beware of outdated hearsay ;-)