Re: [gentoo-dev] Current unavoidable use of xz utils in Gentoo

["Eddie Chapman" <eddie@ehuk.net>]

Just to report I've been able to remove app-arch/xz-utils from my own
workstation, with 2412 packages installed and running kde. I'm going to
roll it out to my other gentoo systems which have a lot less stuff on them
so am confident will be fine. It's not completely trivial but not as
difficult as I imagined it to be, certainly something an advance Gentoo
user could do if they wanted, with instructions. It does involve a
relatively small hack and functionality previously provided by xz-utils is
replaced by app-arch/p7zip.

I haven't had to give up distfile checksum verifications, everything
builds, boots and is working fine, I don't miss it at all. There is some
small (at least small for me) functionality you'll lose, but nothing I'll
miss.  I also had to uninstall 2 desktop packages which I can live
without, in order to get there, but I believe even they can be later
coaxed into working with some persuasion. I would imagine the majority of
Gentoo installations would not miss it unless they do a lot of work daily
directly using xz-utils and they particularly like all the different
permutations of how it can be run and inserted here and there.

Also, it goes without saying if you run any sort of application that
absolutely refuses to run without liblzma.so being present and the
requirement cannot be compiled out, or you have scripts which rely on
liblzma.so provided functionality inside the language they use, then of
course this cannot be done.

If anyone wants to know the details of how to do it no problem just ask. 
I won't post if no one asks, to not get on people's nerves here with and
this mail getting longer and longer, especially when most here are not
interested in doing this and don't believe it is necessary.

For all the overworked Gentoo developers I'd like to compliment you for
once rather than irritating you; it's only realistically possible to do
because of the the powerful distribution you have created, particularly
the great choices you've made along the way, that allows the Linux user to
do advanced stuff that would just not be realistically achievable to users
on the vast majority of other distros.

Eddie