Re: make dist-lzma and make dist-xz

[Stefano Lattarini]

On Wednesday 14 December 2011, Peter Rosin wrote:
> Stefano Lattarini skrev 2011-12-13 18:17:
> > On Monday 12 December 2011, Peter Rosin wrote:
> >>
> >> Hoping to fix the last fail in the testsuite, I looked
> >> into adding something like LZMA_OPT or something to "make dist-lzma".
> >> But in my cursory googling, I could not get my grips around what
> >> variable to use. Does anyone know?
> >>
> > I don't, but I have another consideration: since lzma seems to be
> > supersed by xz [1][2], couldn't we simply deprecate the `dist-lzma'
> > option in this 11.1.2 version, and remove it altogether from the
> > next major (or even minor) version?  WDYT?
> 
> That seems a bit drastic to me.
>
Why?  After all, lzma is deprecated by its own author in favor of xz, and
using a deprecated format/program to distribute software whose tarballs
should remain available for various years at least (as is the case with
most GNU software) seems like a bad idea to me.

BTW, I like Bob's idea that the `dist-lzma' option could just start
producing `.xz' tarballs to avoid a too-sudden backward-incompatibility,
so I'll likely go down that road (after 1.11.2).  Opinions?

Regards,
  Stefano