Dropping bzip2 release tarballs?

[David Feuer]

Does this really strain storage infrastructure? There are only a few
blobs per release. If that's really a problem, sufficiently ancient
ones can presumably be pruned down to a single format without too many
complaints (e.g., if someone wants GHC 7.6, they may not be able to
have their choice of format). Bandwidth seems an entirely legitimate
concern, but thankfully a symmetric one—most users will want to
download the smallest available format, and those who are willing to
pay the extra time to download another likely have a good reason.

On Wed, Jan 13, 2016 at 11:19 AM, Ben Gamari <ben at well-typed.com> wrote:
> tl;dr do you rely on the .bz2 release tarballs on downloads.haskell.org?
>       If so, let us know!
>
>
> Hello everyone,
>
> As you may have noticed, a few releases ago we started producing
> xz-compressed binary distributions in addition to the usual bzip2
> tarballs.
>
> While preparing 8.0.1-rc1 it was suggested that we move to distributing
> xz tarballs exclusively. Not only would this move reduce storage and
> bandwidth demands on our infrastructure but it would also simplify the
> job of producing the distributions. Indeed there is plenty of precendent
> for projects who have moved exclusively to xz (the Linux kernel and git
> being two examples).
>
> Of course, these reasons alone aren't sufficient to abandon those who
> might rely on our bzip2 tarballs. If you feel strongly that we should
> continue to distribute bzip2 tarballs, please let us know.
>
> Thanks!
>
> - Your friendly GHC packaging gnomes
>
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