Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cica!gatech!udel!mmdf
From: Leisner.Henr@xerox.com (marty)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: compression + distribution
Message-ID: <20051@louie.udel.EDU>
Date: 19 Jul 89 18:52:24 GMT
Sender: mmdf@udel.EDU
Lines: 35

I really don't think improved compression is going to help us
significantly.

On images (with mostly white space) techniques like RLL encoding can give
you 1-2 orders of magnitude of compression.  The ascii compression
techniques give you a factor of 2 or 3.

For C programs (lots of letters, lots of different words floating around),
LZW compression (i.e. compress) works pretty good.  16 bits is somewhat
better than 13 bits (my experience with large distribution of C code in tar
format) is 
13 bits will give you a little better than a factor of 2 compression and 16
bit will give a little less than a factor of 3.

For distribution, I was unhappy with the tons of compressed ar files -- I'd
rather see source trees in compressed tar format.  It seems the Minix ar is
somewhat different than the other ar's I've used.  Tar seems to be
inherently portable.

Perhaps the answer is not ship all the source code.

Ship the binaries, the Minix OS sources and maybe some of the tools source
code.

There can be a README file about how to obtain the rest of the user
contributed software (i.e. uucp, networks, bulletin boards, the guy down
the hall, etc.).

I don't know how workable this is -- it's just a suggstion (I'd hate to see
all the good user contributed software drive up the price of the product).

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