GNU bug report logs - #33880
[PATCH] Compress past NEWS files during installation

Previous Next

To add a comment to this bug, you must first unarchive it, by sending
a message to control AT debbugs.gnu.org, with unarchive 33880 in the body.
You can then email your comments to 33880 AT debbugs.gnu.org in the normal way.

Toggle the display of automated, internal messages from the tracker.

Message #5 received at submit <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: agrambot <at> gmail.com
To: bug-gnu-emacs <at> gnu.org
Subject: [PATCH] Compress past NEWS files during installation
Date: Wed, 26 Dec 2018 13:49:28 -0600

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

This shaves off just over a MB off of the installation using gzip -9.
While I was at it, I put in the compression of etc/refcards/*.ps, which
covers part of a TODO.

I wanted to compress etc/refcards/*.tex as well, but I noticed that it
would affect the Makefile that is also installed. It appears to be the
only Makefile that's installed; if there's little or no reason for it,
would it be okay to remove it during installation and compress the *.tex
files as well?

[0001-Compress-past-NEWS-files-and-etc-refcards-.ps.patch (text/x-patch, attachment)]

Message #8 received at 33880 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Alex <agrambot <at> gmail.com>
To: 33880 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Cc: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
Subject: Re: bug#33880: [PATCH] Compress past NEWS files during installation
Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2019 08:57:13 -0600

agrambot <at> gmail.com writes:

> This shaves off just over a MB off of the installation using gzip -9.
> While I was at it, I put in the compression of etc/refcards/*.ps, which
> covers part of a TODO.
>
> I wanted to compress etc/refcards/*.tex as well, but I noticed that it
> would affect the Makefile that is also installed. It appears to be the
> only Makefile that's installed; if there's little or no reason for it,
> would it be okay to remove it during installation and compress the *.tex
> files as well?

Ping.  Is this okay to apply to master?

Message #11 received at 33880 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
To: Alex <agrambot <at> gmail.com>
Cc: 33880 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#33880: [PATCH] Compress past NEWS files during installation
Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2019 17:14:34 +0200

> From: Alex <agrambot <at> gmail.com>
> Cc: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
> Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2019 08:57:13 -0600
> 
> agrambot <at> gmail.com writes:
> 
> > This shaves off just over a MB off of the installation using gzip -9.
> > While I was at it, I put in the compression of etc/refcards/*.ps, which
> > covers part of a TODO.
> >
> > I wanted to compress etc/refcards/*.tex as well, but I noticed that it
> > would affect the Makefile that is also installed. It appears to be the
> > only Makefile that's installed; if there's little or no reason for it,
> > would it be okay to remove it during installation and compress the *.tex
> > files as well?
> 
> Ping.  Is this okay to apply to master?

Sorry for not responding earlier.

I don't think compressing *.ps files is a good idea, because then they
cannot be printed without manually uncompressing them.

As for NEWS, I don't have a strong opinion, but it sounds like a very
small gain for the trouble.  What do others think?  Perhaps this
should be discussed on emacs-devel first.

Thanks.

Message #14 received at 33880 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Alex <agrambot <at> gmail.com>
To: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
Cc: 33880 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#33880: [PATCH] Compress past NEWS files during installation
Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2019 09:43:26 -0600

Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org> writes:

> Sorry for not responding earlier.

No worries.

> I don't think compressing *.ps files is a good idea, because then they
> cannot be printed without manually uncompressing them.

That makes sense; I just saw the TODO and figured that I might as well
do it while I was there.

> As for NEWS, I don't have a strong opinion, but it sounds like a very
> small gain for the trouble.  What do others think?  Perhaps this
> should be discussed on emacs-devel first.
>
> Thanks.

I don't think it's much trouble (though I admit that a MB isn't much of
a deal these days), especially after the patch has already been made.

I'll make a thread over there.

Message #17 received at 33880 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Michael Albinus <michael.albinus <at> gmx.de>
To: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
Cc: 33880 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, Alex <agrambot <at> gmail.com>
Subject: Re: bug#33880: [PATCH] Compress past NEWS files during installation
Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2019 16:54:13 +0100

Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org> writes:

> As for NEWS, I don't have a strong opinion, but it sounds like a very
> small gain for the trouble.  What do others think?  Perhaps this
> should be discussed on emacs-devel first.

IIRC, Stefan wrote a small code snippet which scans NEWS files and tries
to determine, when a Lisp object was added to Emacs. I don't know
whether this would still work with compressed NEWS files.

Given, that disk space of 1 MB is nothing today, I'm not in favour of
such a compression. I don't know what it is good for, honestly.

> Thanks.

Best regards, Michael.

Message #20 received at 33880 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Alex <agrambot <at> gmail.com>
To: Michael Albinus <michael.albinus <at> gmx.de>
Cc: 33880 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
Subject: Re: bug#33880: [PATCH] Compress past NEWS files during installation
Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2019 10:23:16 -0600

Michael Albinus <michael.albinus <at> gmx.de> writes:

> Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org> writes:
>
>> As for NEWS, I don't have a strong opinion, but it sounds like a very
>> small gain for the trouble.  What do others think?  Perhaps this
>> should be discussed on emacs-devel first.
>
> IIRC, Stefan wrote a small code snippet which scans NEWS files and tries
> to determine, when a Lisp object was added to Emacs. I don't know
> whether this would still work with compressed NEWS files.

It should work similarly to scanning *.el.gz files. Depending on how the
snippet was made (e.g., with a regex that accepts *.gz NEWS files), it
might even work with no changes.

> Given, that disk space of 1 MB is nothing today, I'm not in favour of
> such a compression. I don't know what it is good for, honestly.

It's indeed barely anything, but I also don't see much of a reason to
not do it. If we're already compressing a bunch of files, why not
compress the stale NEWS files at the same time?

Message #23 received at 33880 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
To: Alex <agrambot <at> gmail.com>
Cc: 33880 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, michael.albinus <at> gmx.de
Subject: Re: bug#33880: [PATCH] Compress past NEWS files during installation
Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2019 19:59:37 +0200

> From: Alex <agrambot <at> gmail.com>
> Cc: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>,  33880 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
> Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2019 10:23:16 -0600
> 
> It's indeed barely anything, but I also don't see much of a reason to
> not do it. If we're already compressing a bunch of files, why not
> compress the stale NEWS files at the same time?

FWIW, I use those "stale" NEWS files all the time, because I
frequently need to establish what was a version of Emacs where some
feature was first introduced or announced.

Message #26 received at 33880 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Alex <agrambot <at> gmail.com>
To: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
Cc: 33880 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, michael.albinus <at> gmx.de
Subject: Re: bug#33880: [PATCH] Compress past NEWS files during installation
Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2019 15:33:24 -0600

Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org> writes:

>> From: Alex <agrambot <at> gmail.com>
>> Cc: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>,  33880 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
>> Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2019 10:23:16 -0600
>> 
>> It's indeed barely anything, but I also don't see much of a reason to
>> not do it. If we're already compressing a bunch of files, why not
>> compress the stale NEWS files at the same time?
>
> FWIW, I use those "stale" NEWS files all the time, because I
> frequently need to establish what was a version of Emacs where some
> feature was first introduced or announced.

Oh, I didn't mean that "no one uses these dusty old files", but rather
"no one often uses these files outside of Emacs". If you view them in
Emacs, then `auto-compression-mode' decompresses the files on the fly. I
think compression here is less of an issue than it is for Emacs Lisp
files, which are already compressed and used for source code lookup all
the time.

Message #29 received at 33880 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Glenn Morris <rgm <at> gnu.org>
To: Alex <agrambot <at> gmail.com>
Cc: 33880 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>, michael.albinus <at> gmx.de
Subject: Re: bug#33880: [PATCH] Compress past NEWS files during installation
Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2019 18:00:36 -0400

FWIW, I think files like NEWS belong in /usr/share/doc
(bug#25781, I haven't found any time to work on it yet).
I think compressing the files installed there would be very natural.
(Eg Debian seems to compress text files in /usr/share/doc by default.
Looks like Red Hat does not, though.)

Message #32 received at 33880 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
To: Alex <agrambot <at> gmail.com>
Cc: 33880 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, michael.albinus <at> gmx.de
Subject: Re: bug#33880: [PATCH] Compress past NEWS files during installation
Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2019 06:53:52 +0200

> From: Alex <agrambot <at> gmail.com>
> Cc: michael.albinus <at> gmx.de,  33880 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
> Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2019 15:33:24 -0600
> 
> If you view them in Emacs, then `auto-compression-mode' decompresses
> the files on the fly.

I usually grep them outside Emacs.

Message #35 received at 33880 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Alex <agrambot <at> gmail.com>
To: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
Cc: 33880 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#33880: [PATCH] Compress past NEWS files during installation
Date: Sat, 16 Mar 2019 12:28:16 -0600

Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org> writes:

>> From: Alex <agrambot <at> gmail.com>
>> Cc: michael.albinus <at> gmx.de,  33880 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
>> Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2019 15:33:24 -0600
>> 
>> If you view them in Emacs, then `auto-compression-mode' decompresses
>> the files on the fly.
>
> I usually grep them outside Emacs.

Any chance you have zgrep on your system?

If not, then do you not have an uncompressed git repository directory to
grep?

Message #38 received at 33880 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
To: Alex <agrambot <at> gmail.com>
Cc: 33880 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#33880: [PATCH] Compress past NEWS files during installation
Date: Sat, 16 Mar 2019 20:51:59 +0200

> From: Alex <agrambot <at> gmail.com>
> Cc: 33880 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
> Date: Sat, 16 Mar 2019 12:28:16 -0600
> 
> > I usually grep them outside Emacs.
> 
> Any chance you have zgrep on your system?

It's a Posix shell script, so not very useful on MS-Windows.

> If not, then do you not have an uncompressed git repository directory to
> grep?

Not on every machine I work on.  Besides, sometimes I need to look in
a released Emacs, whose sources are in a separate tree.

Message #41 received at 33880 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Michael Albinus <michael.albinus <at> gmx.de>
To: Alex <agrambot <at> gmail.com>
Cc: 33880 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
Subject: Re: bug#33880: [PATCH] Compress past NEWS files during installation
Date: Sat, 16 Mar 2019 21:08:31 +0100

Alex <agrambot <at> gmail.com> writes:

Hi Alex,

>>> If you view them in Emacs, then `auto-compression-mode' decompresses
>>> the files on the fly.
>>
>> I usually grep them outside Emacs.
>
> Any chance you have zgrep on your system?

I believe we could find a solution for all these problems. But I still
don't understand why we should.

Maybe you said it already, and I didn't care enough: could you pls say,
what is the advantage of compressed NEWS files, that we must do this.

Best regards, Michael

Message #44 received at 33880 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi <at> gnus.org>
To: Michael Albinus <michael.albinus <at> gmx.de>
Cc: 33880 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>,
 Alex <agrambot <at> gmail.com>
Subject: Re: bug#33880: [PATCH] Compress past NEWS files during installation
Date: Sun, 23 Jun 2019 22:02:28 +0200

Michael Albinus <michael.albinus <at> gmx.de> writes:

> Alex <agrambot <at> gmail.com> writes:
>
> Hi Alex,
>
>>>> If you view them in Emacs, then `auto-compression-mode' decompresses
>>>> the files on the fly.
>>>
>>> I usually grep them outside Emacs.
>>
>> Any chance you have zgrep on your system?
>
> I believe we could find a solution for all these problems. But I still
> don't understand why we should.
>
> Maybe you said it already, and I didn't care enough: could you pls say,
> what is the advantage of compressed NEWS files, that we must do this.

The space gain here was quite small, and there are drawbacks to
compressing the NEWS files, and nobody seemed really enthusiastic about
it, so I think the decision is not to do this, and I'm closing this bug
report.

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no

Previous Next

GNU bug tracking system
Copyright (C) 1999 Darren O. Benham, 1997,2003 nCipher Corporation Ltd, 1994-97 Ian Jackson.