Add support for user-defined compressors (was: Re: Automake 1.11.2 released)

[Stefano Lattarini]

Severity: whishlist
thanks

On 12/27/2011 08:21 PM, Antonio Diaz Diaz wrote:
> Hello Bob, and thanks.
> 
> Bob Friesenhahn wrote:
>>
>> The approach that lzip used satisifies the standard GNU-mandated
>> configuration requirements.  Due to using only standard C++, it only
>> needs to configure aspects such as the compiler used and installation
>> prefix. This approach leads to a very small source package similar to
>> that of gzip and bzip2.  The drawback of using standard C++ is that
>> C++ has only been standardized since 1998 and a C++-runtime library
>> is required in order for lzip to be used.  This means that lzip might
>> not be available in every possible circumstance (but there is always
>> the gzip fallback).
> 
> For those "possible circumstances" there is clzip[1], a C89 versión
> of lzip. And for even more stripped down systems there is lunzip[2],
> a small C89 decompressor.
> 
> [1] http://www.nongnu.org/lzip/clzip.html
> [2] http://www.nongnu.org/lzip/lunzip.html
> 
> 
> BTW Stefano, what do you think about supporting parallel versions of
> the compressors, like lbzip2 <http://freecode.com/projects/lbzip2> or
> plzip <http://www.nongnu.org/lzip/plzip.html>?
>
I think it's about time we introduce an API that will allow maintainers
to easily plug-in their own compressor :-)  Implementing that shouldn't
be too difficult, given the similarity and duplication among the various
`dist-*' targets.  The slightly trickier part will be devising an API
that is complete and simple enough.  I'm CC:ing bug-automake so that we
won't forget about the issue.

Regards,
  Stefano