Re: [kernel.org users] XZ Migration discussion

From: Avi Kivity
Date: Sat Feb 13 2010 - 05:21:53 EST


On 02/13/2010 11:59 AM, Stefan Richter wrote:
Jean Delvare wrote:
On Sat, 13 Feb 2010 00:07:02 +0100, Willy Tarreau wrote:
Gzip is well
defined as a standard, it's even described in an RFC and is present
on almost any system (unix or not) now. Any student who wants to take
a look at the kernel will have access to gunzip, even from an old
Solaris 8 workstation or a Windows XP desktop PC.
Really? I have a Windows XP laptop at hand and it can't read .gz files.
If I ask it to try, it tells me I should install WinZip. I also seem to
recall that I had to install GNU gzip myself back when I was working on
a Solaris workstation (but I might remember badly.)
As a side note: 7zip, a very popular and Free archiving tool for
Windows, supports xz since its version 9 which is currently available as
a beta. So, WRT the need to get an extra unarchiver, xz is just as
accessible to Windows users as gz is.

Can you even unpack a kernel tree on Windows? There are some files (e.g. net/ipv4/netfilter/ipt_{ecn,ECN}.c) which conflict on a case-preserving filesystem.

--
Do not meddle in the internals of kernels, for they are subtle and quick to panic.

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