[arch-dev-public] RFC: (devtools) Changing default compression method to zstd

[Allan McRae]

On 25/3/19 4:34 am, Robin Broda via arch-dev-public wrote:
> This change requires a new pacman release, as as of writing this, zstd support is in master but hasn't landed in a release yet.

Which is a complete blocker for quite a period of time.

We need to assume every system has a copy of pacman-5.2+ before we can
switch packages to zstd.  Otherwise updates can break systems (pacman
and all dependencies will need to stay as .xz for a year at least, and
we have to hope that partial update does not break anything until a full
update is run).  Experience switching from .gz to .xz showed system
breakage was a fairly regular occurrence.

I would not do this until at least one year, maybe two after pacman-5.2
is released.

Allan