[Python-Dev] Re: Planning to drop gzip compression for future releases. (original) (raw)

Brett C. bac at OCF.Berkeley.EDU
Sat Sep 18 21:57:56 CEST 2004

damien morton wrote:

Umm, gzip compression is also one of the possible http compression algorithms. bz2 isnt.

What does HTTP compression have to do with whether we have a gzipped release of Python?

My personal take on all of this is that we make the release manager's job as simple as possible. That means either ditch gzip files or ditch bzip2 files. If we stick with gzip we basically eat the bandwidth cost. If we go with bzip2 we need to link to where to get the source to compile, if not host a copy of the bzip2 source ourselves. But either way I completely sympathize with the release managers and I am all for making people's lives easier at release time.

So I say we should go with bzip2. While we might get our bandwidth for free thanks to the good graces of XS4ALL and Thomas, I don't think we should view it as infinite since they are still footing the bill. If we can do something easily that would reduce their cost enough to buy Thomas a soda I think we should do it. If that means some people need to go download some free software, then so be it. Considering Python has practically no required tools beyond a C compiler we have rather low dependency requirements for UNIX in my eyes.

Hell, bzip2's source is less than the difference between 2.4's bzip2 source package compared to the gzip one. We could have a copy of the latest bzip2 on our server for people to download and we would still save on bandwidth even when people need both Python and bzip2.

Plus, without starting a flame war, bzip2 is under a BSD license so it gets a gold star from me. =)

-Brett

More information about the Python-Dev mailing list