[libvirt] Re: [PATCH] also allow use of XZ for Qemu image compression

[Charles Duffy]

Jim Meyering wrote:
> Daniel Veillard wrote:
>>   Hum, I realize that support of LZOP was added after 0.7.0, so we never
>> made a release with it (well except for git snapshot which may have been
>> pushed).
>>   I wonder if the best is not to just drop the lzop option altogether
>> and stick xz as a package dependancy until we have found a way to
>> provide at the API level which compression options are actually
>> available.
>>
>>   Opinions ?
> 
> Dropping lzop sounds good.  It seems lzop is not very popular.
> We don't need that many choices.

lzop may not be popular, but it is distinct -- a minimum of 3x faster 
than every other compressor offered as an option.

As the decision to use compression at all is offered as a disk space vs 
performance tradeoff, having an option with minimal performance impact 
is crucial inasmuch as it makes compression valuable to users for whom 
the tradeoff otherwise might not have made sense at all.