do not compress pdf files stored in Cactus repo

[Roland Haas]

Compressing the pdf files means that changes propagate through the file and a change at the beginning of the file cause changes in all of the compressed file, effectively disabling git's delta compression of blobs.

The patch proposed in https://bitbucket.org/cactuscode/cactus/pull-requests/23/cactus-disable-compression-in-included-pdf/diff disables pdf compression

Keyword: documentatino

[Ian Hinder]

What is the compression ratio?

[Frank Löffler]

For the UsersGuide I get about 40% of the uncompressed size. Given that rather poor compression we wouldn't loose a lot by using the uncompressed ones.

[Barry Wardell]

Also keep in mind that git compresses repository data so it's possible that you could actually end up being more space-efficient by not pre-compressing files.

[Frank Löffler]

Yes - That is what the ticket is about. You loose space because the files on-disk would be uncompressed, but you probably gain more because all the history would be smaller using uncompressed files. And since git stores all history and not just the last version that can add up.

[Roland Haas]

Applied in git hash 8e94053 of the flesh.