Z compression not yet supported (Was: mk-origtargz)

[Andreas Tille]

Hi James,

On Tue, May 13, 2014 at 11:19:45PM -0400, James McCoy wrote:
> > 
> > The attached patch (not yet fully) supports Z compression.  It would
> > need also enabling this compression in
> > 
> >    libdpkg-perl: /usr/share/perl5/Dpkg/Compression.pm
> > 
> > While it seems a quite rare case I'd consider it useful to support this
> > compression method as well.
> 
> For completeness or because you actually have upstreams that use it?

I definitely have upstreams that are using it - just stumbled upon one
(why do you think I came up with this yesterday ;-)) and I'll bet we
have at least 100 packages in Debian fitting this criterion (without
having done any research whether my estimation is true).

> If it's the latter, then I'm fine with adding it.  I doubt libdpkg-perl
> will accept a patch for it though since that's not a valid compressor
> for Debian packages.

I have no idea about the role of Dpkg/Compression.pm - but .Z is
definitely a compression which is used in the UNIX world.  Do you think
it makes more sense to use something like

   if ( $comp =~ /Z/ ) {
      # handle Z compression manually
   } else {
      # current code
   }

to work around the fact that Debian packages are not using this?

Kind regards

     Andreas.

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