Re: Zutils vs single compressor utilities

[Antonio Diaz Diaz]

Paul Eggert wrote:
> I thought the idea was to add an option when
> building, to rename (e.g.,) zcat to gzcat.

This was one of the alternatives, and I think it is a perfectly fine 
solution.


> I don't recall any urgency to doing this; obviously,
> any solution we come up with will take some time
> to propagate, and in the meantime zutils should have
> a solution for dealing with gzip 1.4 and earlier.

The urgency exists because until a modified version of gzip is released, 
distributions will have to do the rename themselves, and they will do in 
incompatible ways, prolonging the transition and creating confusion to 
the users.

See for example:

http://www.dragora.org/wiki/
Dragora is renaming to g${FILE} the programs in gzip unconditionally.

http://packages.debian.org/sid/zutils
Debian is renaming to ${FILE}.gzip the programs in gzip when installing 
zutils.

http://www.opencsw.org/search/zutils/
OpenCSW is capitalizing the programs in zutils.

Of course this is happening because some people find the multi-format 
zutils useful and they are tired of waiting for gzip to rename its 
scripts. I am been pursuing this since August 2009[1][2], even before 
gzip-1.3.13 was released.
[1] http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gzip/2009-08/msg00000.html
[2] http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gzip/2009-11/msg00001.html

Zutils is supposed to be an improved replacement for gzip-only scripts, 
therefore backwards compatibility is supposed to be provided by zutils' 
programs themselves. (Zutils' zcat for example, ignores some gzip 
options to be compatible with gzip's zcat). So zutils' solution for 
dealing with gzip 1.4 and earlier is to overwrite any non-renamed 
gzip-only script.


Best regards,
Antonio.