[task #15699] Unified format for software source code archival

[Mohammad Akhlaghi]

URL:
  <https://savannah.nongnu.org/task/?15699>

                 Summary: Unified format for software source code archival
                 Project: Reproducible paper template
            Submitted by: makhlaghi
            Submitted on: Fri 19 Jun 2020 02:14:33 AM BST
         Should Start On: Fri 19 Jun 2020 12:00:00 AM BST
   Should be Finished on: Fri 19 Jun 2020 12:00:00 AM BST
                Category: Software
                Priority: 5 - Normal
                  Status: Postponed
                 Privacy: Public
        Percent Complete: 0%
             Assigned to: None
             Open/Closed: Open
         Discussion Lock: Any
                  Effort: 0.00

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Details:

Currently the software source codes are mostly stored in the same tarball that
they were originally distributed: most are '.tar.gz', some are '.tar.xz', and
some '.tar.lz' (mostly those I have had to re-package for special reasons),
and some even in '.zip'!

Since we are moving to use our own repository for software source codes by
default (task #15686), I am proposing to adopt a special storage format also.


In particular, I have been really impressed by Lzip
<http://www.nongnu.org/lzip/lzip.html> due to its elegance (arguably the
smallest program in Maneage!), and thus future-proof-ness, and excellent
compression ratio for source code: a '.tar.lz' is usually almost half the size
of a '.tar.gz' file. Its is such an elegant format, that you can even use its
manual to write the decompression algorithm! You don't even need to have the
Lzip software! Because of all this, it is also currently the first program
that Maneage builds.

So I am proposing to convert all source code that goes into the official
Maneage software repository to '.tar.lz' (like on Zenodo
<https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3883409>, or our own maneage.org
<http://git.maneage.org/tarballs-software.git/tree/>) . Ofcourse the existing
source codes will remain untouched, this proposal only affects new software to
be added.

Furthermore, Antonio (author of Lzip who has guided me a lot over the last
four years), mentioned that "Another possible future problem is that GNU tar
does not create POSIX (ustar) archives by default (I think)". 

So besides adopting a fixed compression standard, we should also decide on a
good way to run GNU Tar to be as future-proof as possible.

Please share your thoughts here to hopefully converge on a good solution soon.




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