[Python-Dev] Zip format (was: Questions about distutils strategy )

[Andrew M. Kuchling]

M.-A. Lemburg writes:
>There were issues with zlib 1.0.4 and later ones. Also, many
>Linux distributions don't have the zlib header files installed.

For example, on RH6.0, zlib.h and zlib.a are in zlib-devel.XXX.rpm,
and zlib.XXX.rpm only contains libz.so.  On the other hand, anyone
who's compiling Python should really have the various -devel RPMs
installed.  I'd argue against including it, because it might cause odd
versioning problems.  For example, what if I have PIL compiled against
zlib1.1.2 (zlib is used for writing PNGs) and the Python binary
includes zlib1.1.3?  There might be hard-to-debug problems
caused by calling the wrong symbol.

PCRE is a special case, because we've actually hacked the code a lot;
it's not the PCRE code as Philip Hazel distributes it.

Just received Guido's email suggesting skipping compression in
archives; not a bad idea.  You'd use less CPU, but might do
more I/O because you're reading more sectors off disk.  There
probably isn't much need for compression when the archive is on-disk;
Java needed it because of applets.

-- 
A.M. Kuchling			http://starship.python.net/crew/amk/
The NSA response was, "Well, that was interesting, but there aren't any
ciphers like that."
    -- Gus Simmons, "The History of Subliminal Channels"