[python-committers] Providing .tgz sources

["Martin v. Löwis"]

> Well, is it more popular because that is just what people are used to
> downloading or the first download link on the web page? Or is it
> because people fundamentally prefer tgz files over tar.bz2?

These questions are difficult to answer with the download stats alone.
If you really want to know, we should setup a poll...

> Are there
> actual platforms that can't handle tar.bz2 but can handle tgz?

That, in turn, is easy to answer: yes, there are. Certain Solaris
releases had gzip available (even though /usr/bin/tar wouldn't know
how to invoke it), but no bzip2 utility.

> I'm
> willing to bet it's because of the download link order and has nothing
> to do with actual preference (especially since we don't state file
> size on the download page).

Not sure what page you are looking at; on

http://www.python.org/download/releases/2.7/

we do.

> Personally I don't know why we have both tgz and tar.bz2 other than
> tradition. I say trim it down to tar.bz2 for portability and move on
> to using a ustar-based tar.xz to be cutting edge and minimize download
> size overall while making it the first download option to make sure
> people notice it. I'd also vote for listing the file size on the
> download page, but that's just another step for release managers that
> I don't want to burden them with.

You would also need to specify what page you refer to as "the download
page".

Regards,
Martin