[arch-general] LZMA - in or out?

[Rogutes]

Dan McGee (2009-01-12 19:59):
> Some non-benefits of LZMA for those that brought up compression of packages
> :
> $ ./testzip.sh openoffice-base-3.0.0-4-x86_64.pkg.tar
> 
<...snip...>
> 
> Yes, LZMA took nearly 5 minutes to compress this package which gzip
> accomplished in 22 seconds.

I am replying to a thread in arch-dev-public list, since I haven't got
permission to post there.

I would like to propose my simple test (note the compression ratio switches):

compression:
gzip -9 openoffice-base-3.0.0-4-i686.pkg.tar    48,20s user 0,30s system 99% cpu 48,609 total
lzma -1 openoffice-base-3.0.0-4-i686.pkg.tar    50,16s user 0,42s system 99% cpu 50,969 total
bzip2 -1 openoffice-base-3.0.0-4-i686.pkg.tar   58,37s user 0,34s system 99% cpu 58,986 total
lzma -2 openoffice-base-3.0.0-4-i686.pkg.tar    72,19s user 0,36s system 99% cpu 1:12,60 total

decompression:
gzip -d openoffice-base-3.0.0-4-i686.pkg.tar.gz    3,33s user 0,39s system 98% cpu 3,783 total
lzma -d openoffice-base-3.0.0-4-i686.pkg.tar.lzma  14,39s user 0,36s system 99% cpu 14,839 total
bzip2 -d openoffice-base-3.0.0-4-i686.pkg.tar.bz2  18,61s user 0,44s system 98% cpu 19,260 total

sizes:
303M openoffice-base-3.0.0-4-i686.pkg.tar
141M openoffice-base-3.0.0-4-i686.pkg.tar.gz
139M openoffice-base-3.0.0-4-i686.pkg.tar.bz2
129M openoffice-base-3.0.0-4-i686.pkg.tar.lzma
119M openoffice-base-3.0.0-4-i686.pkg.tar.lzma-2

default compression ratio switches:
gzip -6
bzip2 -9
lzma -7

And an excerpt from lzma manual:
  In this manual lzma is compared mostly to bzip2 because that is currently
  one of the most widely used free  software  to compress  tar  files  made
  for distribution.  Comparing lzma to gzip is not practical because neither
  lzma nor bzip2 can compete with gzip in compression speed. On the other hand
  the compression ratio of gzip is worse than of lzma and bzip2.


-- 
Rogutes