On Jan 1, 2008 9:40 AM, Marco Costalba <mcostalba@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Jan 1, 2008 7:36 AM, Jeff King <peff@xxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > > The packfile is noticeably larger (55M versus 40M) > > Well 55M versus 40M is _only_ 27% of compression ratio. It means that > the compression algorithm is not so fundamental because the data is > already, how to say, well packaged. > I think zlib is a very good general purpose algorithm, but is main strength is to give good final file sizes, it is mainly intended for files that are seldom decompressed. For the use we do in git IMHO it would seem appropriate to look for algorithms used in the field of filesystem compression, where decompression penalty is a design goal. I know very little about this but I think among kernel people, expert and competent hackers should not be difficult to find, given that compressed filesystem are around from many years under linux/fs/ directory. Marco - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html