Comparing to gzip isn't really worth it. Combine pigz (threaded) with zlib-ng (simd) and you get decent performance. pigz is used in `docker push`.
For example, gzipping llvm.tar (624MB) takes less than a second for me:
$ time /home/harmen/spack/opt/spack/linux-ubuntu24.04-zen2/gcc-13.2.0/pigz-2.8-5ptdjrmudifhjvhb757ym2bzvgtcsoqc/bin/pigz -k hello.tar
real 0m0.779s
user 0m11.126s
sys 0m0.460s
At the same time, zopfli compiled with -O3 -march=native takes 35 minutes. No wonder it's not popular.
It is almost 2700x slower than the state of the art for just 6.8% bytes saved.
In my opinion even the 28x decrease in performance mentioned would be a no-go. Sure the package saves a few bytes but I don't need my entire pc to grind to a halt every time I publish a package.
Besides, storage is cheap but CPU power draw is not. Imagine the additional CO2 that would have to be produced if this RFC was merged.
> 2 gigabytes of bandwidth per year across all installations
This must be a really rough estimate and I am curious how it was calculated. In any case 2 gigabytes over a year is absolutely nothing. Just my home network can produce a terabyte a day.
Because the authors mentioned package, Helmet[1], is 103KB uncompressed and has had 132 versions in 13 years. Meaning downloading every Helmet version uncompressed would result in 132*103KB = 13.7MB.
I feel like I must be missing something really obvious.
