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

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Sep 16, 2009, at 03:01, Anders F Björklund wrote:

> 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...

It's hard not to, since they're so related. :)

> 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.

Yes, I think we should add it too, but I am uncomfortable doing so  
until a stable version of xz exists. It does not seem right for a core  
MacPorts functionality to depend on an unstable version of a software  
package.

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

I read that claim on the Wikipedia page, but am unable to substantiate  
it. The 7z archive of ImageMagick does have the execute bit of the  
configure script set, for example.