[MacPorts] #52000: Add xz to "base" to allow changing the default compression format to .tar.xz in the future

[MacPorts]

#52000: Add xz to "base" to allow changing the default compression format to
.tar.xz in the future
--------------------------+--------------------------------
  Reporter:  mojca        |      Owner:  macports-tickets@…
      Type:  enhancement  |     Status:  new
  Priority:  Normal       |  Milestone:
 Component:  base         |    Version:  2.3.4
Resolution:               |   Keywords:
      Port:               |
--------------------------+--------------------------------

Comment (by ryandesign):

 I don't think it's helpful to remind us of the xz-utils backdoor here.
 Yes, a possibly state-sponsored actor spend years infiltrating the xz-
 utils project to insert a sophisticated backdoor—which never worked on
 macOS, by the way, and so would not have affected us had we started using
 xz to compress our archives, and has never affected us even though many
 ports use xz-compressed distfiles. Could that actor have targeted macOS if
 they wanted to? Sure. If they hadn't had success with xz-utils could they
 have targeted bzip2, zlib, zstd, or any other compression method we might
 choose to use? Sure. Does that mean we should avoid using all software
 just because it could at some point in the future be compromised by
 someone with a government's amount of resources?

 The more general goal of this ticket, per its first line, is to enhance
 MacPorts base so that we could compress archives better. xz files are one
 way to reach that goal. xz files use the lzma algorithm. There are other
 containers using that algorithm, like lz (lzip) and 7z (7zip). And there
 are other compression algorithms that might be worth consideration, like
 zstd. The advantage of xz is that the capability to decompress xz files is
 already built into OS X 10.9 and later—using libarchive, not xz-utils.

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://trac.macports.org/ticket/52000#comment:17>
MacPorts <https://www.macports.org/>
Ports system for macOS