Re: Are gzip-compressed substitutes still used?

[Jonathan Brielmaier <jonathan.brielmaier@web.de>]

On 17.03.21 18:12, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
> (See
> <https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2021-01/msg00378.html>
> for the initial message.)
>
> Here’s an update, 1.5 month later.  This time I’m looking at nginx logs
> covering Feb 8th to Mar 17th and using a laxer regexp than in the
> message above, here are the gzip/lzip download ratio for several
> packages:
>
> --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
> ludo@berlin ~$ ./nar-download-stats.sh /tmp/sample3.log                                                                gtk%2B-3: gzip/lzip ratio: 37/3255 1%
> glib-2: gzip/lzip ratio: 97/8629 1%
> coreutils-8: gzip/lzip ratio: 81/2306 3%
> python-3: gzip/lzip ratio: 120/7177 1%
> r-minimal-[34]: gzip/lzip ratio: 8/302 2%
> openmpi-4: gzip/lzip ratio: 19/236 8%
> hwloc-2: gzip/lzip ratio: 10/43 23%
> gfortran-7: gzip/lzip ratio: 6/225 2%
> --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

Interesting findings...

> Conclusion?  It still sounds like we can’t reasonably remove gzip
> support just yet.
>
> I’d still like to start providing zstd-compressed substitutes though.
> So I think what we can do is:
>
>    • start providing zstd substitutes on berlin right now so that when
>      1.2.1 comes out, at least some substitutes are available as zstd;
>
>    • when 1.2.1 is announced, announce that gzip substitutes may be
>      removed in the future and invite users to upgrade;

My personal substitution servers runs with lzip + zstd, so no gzip. It
works fine, but I didn't had any "legacy" users. Although zstd is only
0,6% of lzip in regards to total downloads over the last months...