Re: Autoconf distributions and xz dependency

[Warren Young]

On 3/2/2012 5:10 PM, Eric Blake wrote:
> we are
> doing users a favor by getting xz installed and commonly available in
> more places.

I went through both the .Z -> .gz and .gz -> .bz2 transitions.  I recall 
a longer overlap period where major archive sites had everything in both 
the new and previous forms.

I don't much care if .gz goes away now, as .Z did before it.  I'd like 
to see a .bz2 option for everything I have to manually untar for at 
least another few years.

The thing about the RPM example is that a new rpm program is installed 
by the distro that contains the new-format RPMs.  You can't reliably 
install binary RPMs built on a newer system on an older one, so Linux 
distro makers can move to newer tech faster.  You can't make the same 
argument for software installed from source.  A lot of the users of such 
packages are bleeding edge folk, like yourself, but a lot are also 
people stuck on marginalized systems where they need to upgrade 
something and can't get a binary package, so they have to build from 
source.  Folk in that latter class are likely to also be missing tar -J.

Sorry to be a speedbump.