Beman Dawes wrote:
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?
Just a thought: Is there any hope of a system where conversion to target archive types are done at the download site after upload? Conceptually, the download site could be configured to convert to derived archive forms after upload, or lazily into a disk cache on download requests. Even the the CR/NL <--> NL translations could be done this way if list of mime types where provided, or is it needed to convert in string literals in binary files as well? If disk space usage and backup is a problem for the download sites, they may be motivated for a cache based solution like this as it may save disk space for old releases and betas while maintaining or improving the service. A system with a contents list file with entries of filename, mime-type and MD5 checksums could together with relatively simple scripts be used to verify quality of the service. -- Bjørn