Is use_7z worth it? (was: Re: [57743] trunk/dports/graphics/ImageMagick/Portfile)

[Anders F Björklund]

Ryan Schmidt wrote:

>> Using .7z isn't a good option in the same way that using .zip  
>> isn't optimal.
>
> In what way is .zip not optimal? It is the built-in compression  
> method offered by the Mac OS X Finder, so at least somebody at  
> Apple thought it was a good choice for something. And software  
> distributed as .zip archives works perfectly fine in MacPorts. It's  
> not optimal in that the compression isn't very good, but in that  
> way it would be completely unlike .7z, which can use lzma  
> compression which is very good.

You are mixing archive formats with compression formats...

The .tar format is better suited to distributing UNIX files,
whereas zip or 7z might be better for Windows or something*.
But .zip and .gz use the same compression, and .7z and .lzma
use the same compression, so it's only about the archiving.

> The ImageMagick developers have chosen to distribute their software  
> in many different formats. In decreasing order of size, they  
> are: .zip, .tar.gz, .tar.bz2, .tar.xz, and .7z. I chose .7z because  
> it is the smallest. I don't see a problem with this.

I don't have a major problem with it either (if I appeared to),
just like you could use the .zip file instead of the .tar.gz.
Just saying that generally it would be preferred to use .tar.xz,
so you probably want to be adding that "use_xz" flag to MacPorts.

For instance, 7z doesn't store UNIX owner/group permissions...

--anders


* PS. Actually one of the best features with .zip is that you
can have compression set off and on the file level, something
that is also available in the .xar format. But for general file
distribution, this usually leads to worse compression ratios.
Just that when doing something like a game, you can choose to
compress the .exe program but not the .mp3 and .jpg and such.