Better compressing VLC DMGs

[zacwest]

Hi,

Currently the VLC .dmg files are compressed using zlib (UDIF) compression. If you were to switch to using bzip2 compression (UDBZ) you'd save about 20% of your download size.

For example, vlc-0.9.9a-intel.dmg in UDIF is 20374916 bytes. vlc-0.9.9a-intel-udbz.dmg in UDBZ is 17025367 bytes. That's about 82% of the total size. This is about the same percent for the 1.0.0rc2 release.

`hdiutil convert <file-in> -format UDBZ -o <file-out>` (instead of the UDIF you're probably currently using) would achieve this, in whatever step the .dmg is created in. The downside is that this errors in 10.3 and previous (instead of letting them find an unsupported .app, as UDBZ was added in 10.4), but these days I don't imagine it's a problem much.

On a side note: you might want to consider using Sparkle for updates; automatic install is a great way to force users to keep up to date. Personally, I find myself always turning off VLC's update check because by and large it's useless: downloading is great, but installing is key.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Patches are welcome.
And since OSX version of VLC is dying because of absence of developers, developers' help is welcome.

[fkuehne]

Hello there,

I've just applied your suggested dmg format change to VLC's forthcoming 1.0 release. Thanks a lot for the hint!

On Sparkle: well, that's a great framework written by a really cool and nice guy. However, our security-über-boss at VideoLAN requires us to use VLC's core to implement the update functionality, which is why we can't use Sparkle on the Mac directly. Still, there is a ticket in our (currently crashed *coughcough*) bug tracker on a partial Sparkle implementation, meaning that I (or another nice OS X dev coming along) will port its auto-installation & restart mechanism to VLC. This is quite easy to accomplish in combination with the existing code and would greatly enhance the usability of our update feature. If you want to get started on this, feel free to ping me in case of any questions.

Best regards

[zacwest]

Hello there,

I've just applied your suggested dmg format change to VLC's forthcoming 1.0 release. Thanks a lot for the hint!

Excellent. Should be a nice reduction.

On Sparkle: well, that's a great framework written by a really cool and nice guy. However, our security-über-boss at VideoLAN requires us to use VLC's core to implement the update functionality, which is why we can't use Sparkle on the Mac directly.

Is there a reason for this? Sparkle 1.5 features DSA signature checking (in fact, that or HTTPS for all connections, is required). From a security standpoint, it's pretty excellent, and woefully omnipresent and *totally* useful. It's pretty easy to set up the appcast—you'd just have to update a few values per release. You can even set minimum OS settings (for example, Adium has 10.3.9-minimum, 10.4-minimum, and 10.5-minimum all in 1 file!) for update checks.

Is there a reason other than making yet-another-thing-to-update-for-a-release?

Still, there is a ticket in our (currently crashed *coughcough*) bug tracker on a partial Sparkle implementation, meaning that I (or another nice OS X dev coming along) will port its auto-installation & restart mechanism to VLC. This is quite easy to accomplish in combination with the existing code and would greatly enhance the usability of our update feature. If you want to get started on this, feel free to ping me in case of any questions.

Best regards

Seems like too much work for not a lot of benefit. If I weren't busy otherwise, I'd give it a shot; but probably something else in VLC, not so much this.

[The DJ]

Is there a reason other than making yet-another-thing-to-update-for-a-release?

Yes, ours is cross-platform.

Seems like too much work for not a lot of benefit. If I weren't busy otherwise, I'd give it a shot; but probably something else in VLC, not so much this.

Yes, it's one of those problems. Everybody has good ideas, no one has the time to implement them.