Plan for release 2.29

[Jeff Law]

On 07/31/2017 08:45 AM, Antonio Diaz Diaz wrote:
> Dear binutils maintainers,
> 
> (Please, CC me, as I am not subscribed).
> 
> Tristan Gingold wrote
> (http://sourceware.org/ml/binutils/2017-06/msg00216.html):
>> On 20/06/2017 15:00, Matthias Klose wrote:
>>> gdb already uses xz compression for it's release tarballs and
>>> compressed diffs. GCC was also changed to xz compressed tarballs
>>> instead of bz2, but keeping gz compressed tarballs.  Could the same
>>> be done for binutils?
>>
>> Why not.
> 
> Because when GCC reluctantly[1] replaced bz2 with xz, Gerald Pfeifer
> recommended me[2] to keep pushing the strengths and advantages of
> lzip[3][4] to broaden its user base. But if binutils also starts
> offering xz tarballs, it will contribute to increase the bandwagon
> effect[5] which, as far as I can tell, is the main reason adduced to
> switch to xz[6].
> 
> Please, note that 'lzip -9' produces a tarball a 2% smaller than xz, in
> spite of lzip using half the RAM to compress and requiring half the RAM
> to decompress than xz:
> 
> -rw-r--r-- 1 19576763 Jul 24 12:41 binutils-2.29.tar.lz
> -rw-r--r-- 1 20001232 Jul 24 12:41 binutils-2.29.tar.xz
> 
> Therefore, I politely request you to consider using lzip instead of xz
> as the third format for binutils tarballs.
> 
> 
> [1] http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2017-06/msg00042.html
> "And just to be clear, I actually don't like xz and I'm always annoyed
> when I run into something delivered in xz format.  But xz support at the
> distro level is pretty ubiquitous at this point."
That's a quote from me.  Please do not use it as a means to promote lzip
as it was never meant to be used in that manner.

Jeff