Use gnu packages in xz or lzma format

[Gilles Espinasse]

Many gnu packages are changed to supply tar.gz and tar.xz and no more tar.bz2

The proposed change is to

• build xz just after bzip2 on toolchain
  
• any package after that in the build order could use tar.xz
  

To not change the tar prerequiste, those packages using tar.xz or tar.lzma has to use a pipe to tar to open the package like
xz -d < $(DL_FILE) | tar xf -

The gain is as follow
1308 autoconf-2.65.tar.bz2
10292 coreutils-8.4.tar.gz
1736 diffutils-2.9.tar.gz
2316 gawk-3.1.7.tar.bz2
1280 grep-2.6.1.tar.gz
892 gzip-1.4.tar.gz
1104 m4-1.4.14.tar.bz2
304 patch-2.6.1.tar.gz
2300 libtool-2.2.6b.tar.gz
2692 texinfo-4.13a.tar.gz
24224 total

1112 autoconf-2.65.tar.xz
4376 coreutils-8.4.tar.xz
980 diffutils-2.9.tar.xz
1704 gawk-3.1.7.tar.xz
812 grep-2.6.1.tar.xz
604 gzip-1.4.tar.xz
904 m4-1.4.14.tar.xz
240 patch-2.6.1.tar.xz
728 libtool-2.2.6b.tar.lzma
1532 texinfo-4.13a.tar.lzma
12992 total

So that spare 11 MB where you should withdraw xz size (1 MB) and xz building time.

coreutils, diffutils, grep , gzip , libtools, textinfo are no more available as tar.bz2 (patch is still available as tar.bz2)

More gain is reachable using binutils and glibc tar.xz but that suppose the build host support that format or build xz first and another time later just for the toolchain. That probably could wait until kernel.org distribute xz package ( such discussion has been opened in february by kernel.org admin ) ​http://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=126591363509450&w=2

[bdubbs@…]

This package is still in beta. The most recent beta release is 2009-08-27, but there is a documented bug as of 2009-09-15.

​http://sourceforge.net/projects/lzmautils/forums/forum/708858/topic/3306733

Setting the milestone to future. We can add this to the book when the stable release is made.

[Gilles Espinasse]

It's probably wise to wait for another release.

Even in beta, it may have less bugs than production release like tar-1.23 that had 3 bugs fixed after the release.

Looking at xz git log, there was another bug fixed recently on git ​http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=305591 and another with x86 assembler on GCC 3

[Gilles Espinasse]

XZ-5.0 has been released

[bdubbs@…]

That took a long time to release. Changing milestone to 6.8.

[willimm]

As a side note, it's nice to have packages in XZ format, but it's not needed unless someone has a slow connection and needs smaller packages. But I would love to see XZ in place of LZMA utils in BLFS, as the latter is deceperated, and is no longer developed.

As a side note, we could of used the previous version of XZ, if you handled it like you did with Speex, but that's just another story.

[ken@…]

Just a data point in case you need it - 5.0.0 builds fine after bzip2 in chapter 5, (I tested that tar can untar a .tar.xz tarball at the beginning of chapter 6). For chapter 6 I built it right at the end (alphabetical order). Again, works fine.

[bdubbs@…]

Added xz utils to the book at revision 9435.

I chose not to change any download packages to the new format because they are all still available in .bz2 format. We will change the download file types if the existing files are no longer distributed in that format.

I placed the package in alphabetical order in both chapter 5 and 6.

[splotz90]

This new package should be added to ​http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/view/development/prologue/package-choices.html as well, shouldn't it?

[bdubbs@…]

Replying to splotz90:

This new package should be added to the 'rationale' page as well, shouldn't it?

Yes. I forgot that. Adding a new package is rare and there are a lot of places to change. Added at rev 9436.