Subject: Re: bug#25538: uncompressed gzip releases please

From: Jim Meyering <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2017 09:40:01 -0700

On Wed, Jan 25, 2017 at 2:34 PM, Karl Berry <[email-masked]> wrote:
> Please make gzip releases in some non-gzip/xz/lzip/bzip form, that is,
> uncompressed or .zip.
>
> I and a colleague just had to waste time explaining to a user how to
> download an old version available as .tar, compile it, and then use that
> to install the new version.  (No, evidently he had no binary. Whatever ...)
>
> It costs nothing to make the releases available in another format than
> .tar.*z, so ... ok? .zip would probably be best, to placate the
> Windows world, but anything would be better than nothing.  --thanks, karl.

Hi Karl,
It's a simple change that is likely to help more than a few, so here's
the diff I'll soon push:
From 7d7e7971532a82d197075d27b63d9f54f2bddd82 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Jim Meyering <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2017 22:42:06 -0700
Subject: [PATCH] maint: also distribute a zip-compressed tarball

* configure.ac (AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE): Add dist-zip, for
those lacking gzip, 7zip, etc.  Suggested by Karl Berry in
https://bugs.gnu.org/25538.
---
 configure.ac | 3 ++-
 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/configure.ac b/configure.ac
index dc0751d..05aa681 100644
--- a/configure.ac
+++ b/configure.ac
@@ -28,7 +28,8 @@ AC_CONFIG_SRCDIR([gzip.c])
 AC_CONFIG_AUX_DIR([build-aux])
 AC_CONFIG_MACRO_DIR([m4])
 AC_CONFIG_HEADERS([lib/config.h:lib/config.hin])
-AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE([1.11 subdir-objects dist-xz color-tests parallel-tests])
+AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE([1.11 subdir-objects dist-xz dist-zip
+                  color-tests parallel-tests])
 AM_SILENT_RULES([yes]) # make --enable-silent-rules the default.

 dnl POSIXCHECK is worthwhile for maintainers, but adds several seconds
-- 
2.8.0-rc2