Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: patch-log sizes

[Miles Bader]

On Wed, Dec 17, 2003 at 11:32:08AM -0800, Tupshin Harper wrote:
> This reminds me of a question that I've been meaning to ask for some 
> time. Is there a strong reason why it makes sense for arch to store 
> files in compressed tars as opposed to storing compressed files in 
> uncompressed tars? Specifically, the difference between a .tgz 
> containing many .txt files vs a .tar containg many .txt.gz files. 
> (Extensions used just to illustrate the fundamental nature of the files 
> in question). Presumably compression ratios would be somewhat less, but 
> accessing a limited subset of the files in the tar would be *much* cheaper.

I suppose you'd have to measure it to know for sure, but in general I think
you get much compression ratios by compressing large files than small ones,
and the components of arch .tar.gz files are typically very small.  Also, tar
itself adds various bits of padding overhead which compression reduces quite
a bit.

It seems very rare to access individual components of a .tar file in an
archive anyway, so I'm not sure why you think it's worth optimizing...

-Miles
-- 
Is it true that nothing can be known?  If so how do we know this?  -Woody Allen