Re: [boost] [release management] Drop .gz and .zip release packaging?

Subject: Re: [boost] [release management] Drop .gz and .zip release packaging?
From: Bjørn Roald (bjorn_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-10-23 12:55:30

Beman Dawes wrote: 
> I'd like to drop the .zip and .gz packages, starting with release 
> 1.38.0. The primary motivation is a personal one; as release manager I 
> do a lot of FTP transfers and would like to spend less time waiting 
> for the big .zip and .gz packages to upload/download.
>
> The problem I see is that CR/NL users still download .zip files twice 
> as often as .7z, and NL users still download about as many .gz 
> packages as bz2.
>
> Comments?

Just a thought:

Is there any hope of a system where conversion to target archive types 
are done at the download site after upload?   Conceptually, the download 
site could be configured to convert to derived archive forms after 
upload, or lazily into a disk cache on download requests.  Even the the 
CR/NL <-->  NL translations could be done this way if list of mime types 
where provided, or is it needed to convert in string literals in binary 
files as well? 

If disk space usage and backup is a problem for the download sites, they 
may be motivated for a cache based solution like this as it may save 
disk space for old releases and betas while maintaining or improving the 
service.  A system with a contents list file with entries of filename, 
mime-type and MD5 checksums could together with relatively simple 
scripts be used to verify quality of the service.  

-- 
Bjørn