[Python-Dev] LZW support in tarfile ?

[Nick Craig-Wood]

Michael Foord <fuzzyman at voidspace.org.uk> wrote:
>  Antoine Pitrou wrote:
> > Tarek Ziadé <ziade.tarek <at> gmail.com> writes:
> >   
> >> But I was wondering if we should we add a LZW support in tarinfo,
> >> besides gzip and bzip2 ?
> >>
> >> Although this compression standard doesn't seem very used these days,
> >>     
> >
> > It would be more useful to add LZMA / xz support.
> > I don't think compress is used anymore, except perhaps on old legacy systems.
> > On my Linux system, I have lots of .gz, .bz2 and .lzma files, but absolutely no
> > .Z file.
> 
>  I've seen the occasional .Z file in recent years, but never that I 
>  recall for a Python package.

On my unix filesystem (which has files stretching back over 20 years)
I find only two .Z files, one dated 1989 and one 2002.  I think you
can safely say that compress is gone!

The worst you are doing by removing compress support is getting the
user of some ancient platform to download one of the binaries here
first.

  http://www.gzip.org/#exe

>  As plugging in external compression tools is less likely to work 
>  cross-platform wouldn't it be both easier and better to deprecate (and 
>  not replace) the compress support.

Agreed.

-- 
Nick Craig-Wood <nick at craig-wood.com> -- http://www.craig-wood.com/nick