Re: Why aren't ELPA packages compressed?

[Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com>]

On Tue, 5 May 2015 15:31:16 +0200 Ulrich Mueller <ulm@gentoo.org> wrote: 

>>>>>> On Tue, 05 May 2015, Tom Tromey wrote:
>> When I wrote package.el, one goal was that installing a package
>> would not require any external tool. So, e.g., that is why I chose
>> tar archives and not some other format -- tar-mode.el can unpack
>> them without a helper.

>>> From NEWS I see that zlib was added in 24. So, that's the reason --
>> at the time it wasn't available. It sounds like it is optional,
>> though, which seems like a problem for users.

UM> As was previously remarked, gzip could be used if Emacs isn't linked
UM> against zlib. And I wonder if there are still any systems nowadays
UM> where neither gzip nor zlib isn't readily available.

Both compressed and uncompressed tarballs could be available, each with
a separate signature. Then package.el could just get the smallest one it
can handle locally (so stuff like bz2 could also work). The web server
would require no more than the original storage for each compression
method but the downloads would be far smaller and faster. And it's
backwards compatible.

Ted