extension sources

[Jason W]

In 3.x, I will pack the extension source files in a single .tar.lzma file named as extension-src.tar.lzma under  to ease maintenance as well as save space on the ibiblio server.  Any source tarballs that are only available as tar.gz, tar,bz2, .zip, etc will be repacked as .tar.lzma to save space.  Using lzma on exsiting gz or bz2 tarballs does not compress them further.  So I will repack them as lzma.  They can easily then with a file manager like emelfm2 be recompressed to .tar.gz or .tar.bz2 to be compatible with the build scripts included in the source.  Often, neither links to the particular source tarball type or the tarball itself is actually included in the submission.  And that is fine, they are easy enough to obtain.  And I also figure that those who will be building/rebuilding extensions are savvy enough to alter the source tarball type to fit the build script's needs.

For gtk2, this changed the space requirements from a 19MB tar.bz2 file  to a13.8MB. .tar.lzma file.

I thing using lzma for sources is being good stewards of ibiblio who is providing this space for free.  But please state any objections.
  

[^thehatsrule^]

Using .xz instead might be preferred instead of .lzma (seems to be a newer version of it)

[bmarkus]

Using .xz instead might be preferred instead of .lzma (seems to be a newer version of it)

I'm next to prefere xz. And its archiver is already in the repo.

[Jason W]

As I have used lzma or xz very little, I was unaware of their differences.  After a little reading on them, it seems xz is the way of the future, so I will use it.

[robc]

Does this mean support for .xz will be in the base? or only as an extension?

When repacking the source, should the build scripts and any other files be included? would this be part of the extension submission process (ie the extension owners create and submit this)?

[Jason W]

Build scripts ca be submitted as usual, tarballs are not necessary though a link to the source helps save time.

I think I will stick to using a directory for the source files so the build scripts can be easily viewed and downloaded without having to download the entire source.  And just use xz compression for the tarballs, which I will do before uploading.

Since there are often no links to source provided, I normally fetch the source using the highest compression format available, so there really is already source tarballs that may not be the same format used in the build script.  Hosting the tarballs on ibiblio is mostly for GPL compliance anyway rather than availability, as the preferred format can be downloaded elsewhere.

Since either build scripts or source archives are normally used by one with a development environment already set up, I don't think that the lack of xz support in base is an issue.