tarball types (was: [ANNOUNCE] xf86-input-libinput 1.2.1)

[Mark Kettenis]

> Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2022 15:53:23 -0800
> From: Alan Coopersmith <alan.coopersmith at oracle.com>
> 
> On 1/23/22 21:18, Peter Hutterer wrote:
> > xf86-input-libinput 1.2.1 is now available. Primarily a few typos and misc
> > minor fixes, the most visible change to distributions is that we now ship an
> > xz tarball instead of bz2. Due to a global shortage of flying cars, you will
> > have to accept that as your "welcome to the future" present. If you don't like
> > the future (and who can blame you!), we still have gz tarballs, simply
> > because I didn't realize we still generated those until I typed out this
> > email.
> 
> While I've been applying this change across the Xorg modules, I've followed
> the lead of those who came before me, and just replaced "dist-bz2" with
> "dist-xz".  To get rid of the gzip files we'd also have to add "no-dist-gzip"
> to our AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE() options.
> 
> Since it's been a decade since GNOME switched to exclusively releasing xz
> tarballs [1], I would expect there being no major headaches to us doing the
> same now, we just hadn't thought much about it. Is this something we want to
> do?  Does anyone have a reason we shouldn't stop making .gz files?
> (It looks like xwayland is already doing xz-only releases now.)
> 
> [1] https://mail.gnome.org/archives/devel-announce-list/2011-September/msg00003.html

OpenBSD's tar does not support xz, so yes, switching to xz-only
releases would be an inconvenience.

Is there a reason to stop making .gz files?  The amount of storage and
bandwidth required to make those available can't be significant in
today's world and stop making them is actual work ;).