unlzma and unxz should be specific binaries instead of links

[Jérôme]

Most users use only decompression tools and rarely compression tools.

I think it would lower the load time (especially cold startup) as well as the argument parsing time if the uncompression tools would be specific binaries. Moreover, it could slightly decrease the memory consumption.

For example, 'gunzip' is a specific binary which have only 2% of the size of the 'gzip' generic binary :
-----
j@dt-X64:~/tmp$ ls -l /bin/gzip /bin/gunzip
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2251 févr. 9 01:26 /bin/gunzip
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 92720 févr. 9 01:26 /bin/gzip
j@dt-X64:~/tmp$
-----

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
Package: xz-lzma 5.1.1alpha+20110809-3
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-23.36-generic 3.2.14
Uname: Linux 3.2.0-23-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.0.1-0ubuntu2
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sat Apr 14 10:13:58 2012
InstallationMedia: Xubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise Pangolin" - Beta amd64 (20120328)
PackageArchitecture: all
SourcePackage: xz-utils
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Mechanical snail (replicator-snail)]

Try `less $(which gunzip)`. It's a shell script that calls `gzip`.

[Thorsten Glaser (mirabilos)]

Huh, that’s new. Since when?

Anyway, a hardlink (or symbolic link) of gunzip to gzip also just works, and is what I’m used to from Unix.

[Jérôme (jerome-bouat)]

Then a specific binary for decompression would save resources. The common parts could be gathered in a shared library.

Most of the time, the compression binary would never be used.

[Thorsten Glaser (mirabilos)]

Actually, putting it into an shlib will be a net loss.

Rather take the full library, compression and decompression, link it statically, and hardlink the compressor and decompressor binaries. That‘d save more.

cf. http://aiju.de/rant/dynamic-linking (thanks cnuke@ for the link)

[Rolf Leggewie (r0lf)]

The purported resource savings haven't been substantiated and most likely won't make any difference. This would be something that upstream would need to change, not Ubuntu as the packaging distro.