[Python-Dev] LZMA support has landed

[Nadeem Vawda]

Hey folks,

I'm pleased to announce that as of changeset 74d182cf0187, the
standard library now includes support for the LZMA compression
algorithm (as well as the associated .xz and .lzma file formats). The
new lzma module has a very similar API to the existing bz2 module; it
should serve as a drop-in replacement for most use cases.

If anyone has any feedback or any suggestions for improvement, please
let me know.

I'd like to ask the owners of (non-Windows) buildbots to install the
XZ Utils development headers so that they can build the new module.
For Debian-derived Linux distros, the relevant package is named
"liblzma-dev"; on Fedora I believe the correct package is "xz-devel".
Binaries for OS X are available from the project's homepage at
<http://tukaani.org/xz/>.

Finally, a big thanks to everyone who contributed feedback during this
module's development!

Cheers,
Nadeem