154965 - Using 7zip to create .zip Mozilla files

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox Build System :: General, enhancement, P4)

Description

[Lapo Luchini]

I suggest using 7zip instead of infozip to create Mozilla .zip distribution
files: it can create smaller files, while being totally compatible with old
archivers.
As an example on of the latest Mozilla snaphosts shrunk from 11.606.109 bytes to
 10.802.846 bytes, that's 7% of pure gain without any compatibility problem.

Moreover it's a GPLed program.

Only problem I can see it's that its currently only available in windows, but I
guess that mozilla windows builds are built on windows as they only compile with
MSVC.

Comment 1

[hacker formerly known as [e-mail]]

-> leaf

Comment 2

[hacker formerly known as [e-mail]]

*** Bug 200832 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 3

[hacker formerly known as [e-mail]]

*** Bug 200832 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 4

[Aaron Kaluszka]

See bug 200832

Comment 5

[Jon Granrose]

in the time of broadband and cheap disk, 800KB doesn't justify the time required
to make the change.

Comment 6

[Aaron Kaluszka]

Why did you remove JAR from the summary?

Comment 7

[Jason Lustig]

We can also use 7zip to make the chrome/*.jar files - 7zip can make regular
*.zip files as well as *.7z files, and in my experience the *.zip files it makes
are smaller than the ones that are in the current builds.

This will reduce build size, and also reduce the startup time because it will
take less time to load up all of the *.jar files that FB does when it starts up.
I was able to cut down, for example, comm.jar to 500k, and browser.jar to 255k.
That will really speed up startup time...

--Jason

Comment 8

[Jesse Ruderman]

I think .jars in Mozilla are uncompressed.

Comment 9

[Robert Parenton]

JARs in Mozilla are uncompressed.  If they were compressed we would have to
decompress them everytime the app was launched.

Also, I can see using 7-Zip having problems with working with the build system.

Comment 10

[Prognathous]

(In reply to comment #5)
> in the time of broadband and cheap disk, 800KB doesn't justify the time required
> to make the change.

Apparently, packages of new Firefox builds are 25% smaller, down to 4.6 MB.
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/005562.html

In my book, this is a very significant improvement.

Prog.

Comment 11

[Aaron Kaluszka]

Prog, .zip files produced by 7-Zip and the 7-Zip 7Z compression format
(specifically LZMA) are two different things that yield very different results.

Comment 12

[Prognathous]

Good to know. Is there an open bug requesting to utilize LZMA compression in
Seamonkey packages?

Prog.

Comment 13

[Aaron Kaluszka]

I don't think so, but now that you mention that, I've added LZMA to bug 93126
for XPIs.

Comment 14

[OstGote!]

Now the Thunderbird installer uses 7-Zip too, see
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=84778. Firefox uses it since Bug
244026 for 0.9x installers.

TB     0.7rc    0.6         FF   0.9     0.8
.exe    5.9     7.9  MiB         4.7     6.2 MiB
.zip    7.5     7.6  MiB         6.0     6.2 MiB

This bug is about to use 7-Zip for creation of Mozilla Seamonkey/Firefox/TB .zip
packages. A lot of optimized Seamonkey builds use this and have only a size of
6.9-7.5 MiB.

I can't find a bug for the use of 7-Zip for the Seamonkey installer packages
(like FF/TB). Should I open a bug? Are there any reasons not to use 7-Zip?

Comment 15

[Chase Phillips]

Paul, here's a good bug to bite off that might be an interesting change to make on the trunk.

Comment 16

[J. Paul Reed [:preed]]

An enhancement request, if you're bored...

Comment 17

[Hermann Schwab]

(In reply to comment #0)
 
> Only problem I can see it's that its currently only available in windows, 

http://sourceforge.net/projects/sevenzip/

p7zip is a quick port of 7z.exe and 7za.exe (command line version of 7zip, see http://www.7-zip.org) for Unix.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/p7zip/

Comment 18

[JC Meyrignac]

I had to patch browser.jar for a bug (occurring when running Selenium RC), and 7zip reduced it from 1886078 down to 547849 bytes.
That's almost 3 times smaller !

Don't say that it's useless, because I have a very slow hard-disk in my laptop, so every byte saved makes it faster to start.
BTW, Firefox is by far the slowest application to start on my PC, around 30 seconds, even though I have Vista and a dual processor plus 2 gb of RAM ! My computer is 6 months old (I have 5 active extensions).

I have not checked the other jar, but I think they should be reduced accordingly.

Another added value is that the final version will be a lot smaller, saving a lot of bandwith on the servers.

Comment 19

[(not currently active) Ted Mielczarek]

"I had to patch browser.jar for a bug (occurring when running Selenium RC), and
7zip reduced it from 1886078 down to 547849 bytes.
That's almost 3 times smaller !"

Note that our .jar files are uncompressed, and they're likely to stay that way. It's simply a disk I/O vs. CPU tradeoff. It's possible that compressing them would be a win on laptops with slow disk, but it's hard to say exactly. Should have zero effect on download size, since we ship those jars inside a compressed .zip or .exe installer anyway.

We could build the .zip with 7z, but it hardly seems worth the effort, as we don't ship releases in .zip format, and the installer is already heavily compressed. In addition, I suspect lots of our nightly testers just use the updater, which pulls .mar files (which are bz2 compressed) anyway.

Given all of that, this isn't worth fixing.