Re: [PATCH] maint: RFC: add lzip tarballs

[Assaf Gordon]

Hello Eric and all,

> On Wed, Jan 11, 2017 at 3:21 PM, Eric Blake <address@hidden> wrote:
>> there are strong arguments for including .lzip
>> distributions, either in addition or in place of .xz:

I would ask at least to keep XZ and not switch solely to lzip.

While I am in no position to evaluate lzip benchmark/robustness/format claims,
I do have some concerns about the lzip program:

First,
It is written in C++. Not a problem by itself, but seems a bit at odds as a 
requirement for system-level package like coreutils.

Second,
I'm not sure how portable and well-tested the program is on the large number of 
platforms that coreutils aim to cater to.
Being a C++ program, I'm not even sure if all these system could easily build 
it or provide it as package.

Third,
I'm a bit wary of the closed development model: there is no public git 
repository, only published tarballs, and not clear how active the development 
or the community are.

Lastly,
I think the test suite is a bit lacking, especially compared to all the claims 
about recovery and robustness of the lzip format.

---

I'm not saying 'xz' is perfect or that it answers all the above issues. But it 
has a "community buy-in" which can't be denied compared to lzip.
If coreutils switches, I think it should switch to something that is provably 
superior not only in benchmark/robustness.

Just my 2 cents,
 - assaf