Beman Dawes wrote:
Boost releases are currently packaged four ways.
With CR/NL line endings:
boost_1_37_0_beta1.7z 27,340,204 boost_1_37_0_beta1.zip 57,017,457
With NL line endings:
boost_1_37_0_beta1.tar.bz2 29,494,538 boost_1_37_0_beta1.tar.gz 36,436,716
I'd like to drop the .zip and .gz packages, starting with release 1.38.0. The primary motivation is a personal one; as release manager I do a lot of FTP transfers and would like to spend less time waiting for the big .zip and .gz packages to upload/download.
The problem I see is that CR/NL users still download .zip files twice as often as .7z, and NL users still download about as many .gz packages as bz2.
Comments?
I vote to keep zip available, if I may. I know that 7z is available freely but I feel quite relucant about installing any additional software, unless absolutely needed. Traditional zip has a far better support in other software, like file managers, for example, than 7z. As for gz/bz2 choice, I'm good with either, since they have relatively the same degree of support on the platforms I work with (Windows and Linux).