Re: [PATCH] configure: Check bzip2 is available

[Peter Maydell]

On Fri, 8 Nov 2019 at 17:07, Philippe Mathieu-Daudé <address@hidden> wrote:
> On 11/8/19 4:43 PM, Eric Blake wrote:
> > bzip2 is no longer a favored compression.  If we are trying to pick a
> > compression that is most likely to be present on any system, go with
> > gzip.  If we are trying to pick a compression that packs tighter and
> > uncompresses faster, pick xz or zstd.  But bzip2 does neither: it packs
> > slightly tighter than gzip but has slower performance in doing so, and
> > thus is no longer used as a default compression.
>
> The problem was with OpenBSD 6.1 which hadn't xz available.
>
> In commit 12745eaa02 Gerd updated the VM to OpenBSD 6.5 and we now have
> access to xz. IIRC OSX supported versions also provide xz.
>
> If we want to revert Laszlo's patches and apply his first version (using
> xz), we should do that during 5.0 dev cycle, now it is too late.
> I'd prefer we simply fix bzip2 for the next release.

I don't think we should try to use 'xz' because I don't see
the point. We should use something that's generally available,
whether that's bzip2 or gzip. Life's too short to deal with
yet another file compression tool and format.

thanks
-- PMM