Re: [PATCH] releases: use newer compression methods for tarballs

[Jan Beulich <jbeulich@xxxxxxxx>]

On 20.08.2025 14:15, Andrew Cooper wrote:
> On 15/07/2025 7:33 am, Jan Beulich wrote:
>> It's unclear to me why we have git create a tarball, extract that, just
>> to then make a tarball again (without any special options, like to
>> override owner or timestamps;
> 
> That's because in c5be91eb8140 you deleted the intermediate step of
> merging qemus

Hmm, perhaps - I'm generally trying to keep the size of such changes down,
when working in an area I'm not overly familiar with.

>> in this context I notice that tarballs
>> created by Andrew have file ownership of andrew/andrew, while ones made
>> by Julien use root/root).
> 
> Ownership where exactly?  the tarball itself (which will be down to
> accounts on downloads.xenproject.org) or the tarball contents itself?

tarball contents.

>> lzip, unlike the other two tools, doesn't really show a progress
>> indicator with -v. Merely having final statistics may make the use of
>> the option here questionable.
> 
> I can't say I find any of the stats relevant.

Happy to drop the v options.

>> --- a/tools/misc/mktarball
>> +++ b/tools/misc/mktarball
>> @@ -31,4 +31,14 @@ git_archive_into $xen_root $tdir/xen-$de
>>  
>>  GZIP=-9v tar cz -f $xen_root/dist/xen-$desc.tar.gz -C $tdir xen-$desc
>>  
>> -echo "Source tarball in $xen_root/dist/xen-$desc.tar.gz"
>> +if [ -n "$(command -v xz)" ]
>> +then
>> +  tar c -C $tdir xen-$desc | $(command -v xz) -v -9 
>> >$xen_root/dist/xen-$desc.tar.xz
>> +fi
>> +
>> +if [ -n "$(command -v lzip)" ]
>> +then
>> +  tar c -C $tdir xen-$desc | $(command -v lzip) -v -9 
>> >$xen_root/dist/xen-$desc.tar.lz
>> +fi
>> +
>> +echo "Source tarball in $xen_root/dist/xen-$desc".tar.[glx]z
> 
> If we're deciding to use multiple compressions, they want to not be
> optional here.  I'd far rather have a reminder to install the package,
> than for it to simply be omitted.
> 
> We don't want to be re-tar-ing now that the qemu's are gone, so I think
> the structure wants to end up as:
> 
> git archive --format=tar HEAD > tmp.tar
> gzip -9 < tmp.tar > $xen_root/dist/xen-$desc.tar.gz &
> zx -9 < tmp.tar > $xen_root/dist/xen-$desc.tar.xz &
> lzip -9 < tmp.tar > $xen_root/dist/xen-$desc.tar.lz &
> wait
> 
> Might as well use the multiple cores better...

I, too, was thinking of that. Yet as per above, when fiddling with code I'm
not overly familiar with, I try to limit the amount of change done. As you
ask for a bigger change, I can certainly do so.

Jan