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

[Andrew Gregory]

On 03/25/19 at 12:28am, Robin Broda via arch-dev-public wrote:
> On 3/25/19 12:22 AM, Andrew Gregory wrote:
> > On 03/25/19 at 12:15am, Robin Broda via arch-dev-public wrote:
> >> On 3/24/19 11:20 PM, Evangelos Foutras via arch-dev-public wrote:
> >>> On Sun, 24 Mar 2019 at 23:45, Allan McRae via arch-dev-public
> >>> <arch-dev-public at archlinux.org> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> We need to assume every system has a copy of pacman-5.2+ before we can
> >>>> switch packages to zstd.
> >>>
> >>> Why is pacman support needed here? I can already install .zstd
> >>> packages using pacman 5.1.3.
> >>>
> >>> The crucial part seems to be libarchive support, which was added in
> >>> v3.3.3 (~ September 2018).
> >>>
> >>
> >> Yes, installing zstd packages works - the pacman release is merely
> >> required for makepkg. Unless that has already landed too, which
> >> would be news to me :)
> >>
> >> Thus i don't think we need a hold-off period like this, Allan.
> > 
> > We still need a hold-off period, we're just waiting to make sure
> > people have libarchive v3.3.3 instead of pacman v5.2.0.
> > 
> 
> That update happened half a year ago, i'm sure that most people with
> an installation that old will already have to fetch other packages,
> like the keyring, separately for it to go through.

If we go ahead with the switch those people won't be able to install
new packages like the keyring, that's the whole point.

> Plus, with libarchives' release cycle, i don't think that libarchive
> itself is gonna be rebuilt immediately after the change is
> implemented - providing extra time to upgrade libarchive without
> having to download a release packed as xz separately.

I don't consider hoping that libarchive doesn't need a rebuild in the
near future a great strategy.  That being said, this is really
a question of how long of a period we need between libarchive v3.3.3
and us making the switch.  I'm not a packager, so I don't have much of
an opinion on that.