pbzip2 should be able to replace bzip2

[Bogdan Butnaru]

Binary package hint: pbzip2

Although pbzip2 claims to be a complete replacement of bzip2, it can't be used like that on a normal Ubuntu system without a lot of hackery. The reason is that the normal bzip2 is a dependency of lots of packages, so it can't be easily removed.

Ideally there should be a package (say, pbzip2-replacement) that depends on pbzip2, and which replaces bzip2, such that its installation removes bzip2 but satisfies all dependencies on it. This would only add a symlink from bzip2 to pbzip2, or something like that.

Though since bzip2 is by default installed in /bin and pbzip2 in /usr/bin, there might be a bit more to it than that. Also, the alternatives system might be appropriate.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
Date: Wed Feb 17 18:24:27 2010
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: pbzip2 1.0.5-1ubuntu1
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_US.UTF-8
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-20.57-generic
SourcePackage: pbzip2
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-20-generic x86_64

[Jeff Gilchrist (jeff-gilchrist)]

That latest version of pbzip2 1.1.0 should allow it to be a complete bzip2 replacement if you can figure out the dependency problems:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pbzip2/+bug/538529

[Josh Leverette (coder543)]

I agree with this, the way things are moving towards multicore, we should all be using pbzip2 as default. What if bzip2 became a dummy package that pointed to pbzip2? pbzip2 doesn't suffer a performance hit on single core machines to my knowledge, and its beneficial for everyone else, so no one loses.

[Robert Hardy (rhardy)]

My PPA has a build of pbzip2-1.15-0ubuntu1 with a few of the addons which bzip2 has. ex. bzdiff as pbzdiff etc.
If pbzip2 is an alternative it probably should be in /bin not /usr/bin. My package made that change too.
Still missing are: bzip2recover, bzexe and bzcat. But at least it is a start.