Re: h2#404 requiring gzip and/or deflate

In message <dflcg9d9ugmc1m40cjca9npmnf84gel21j@hive.bjoern.hoehrmann.de>, Bjoer
n Hoehrmann writes:

>The gzip format is a container format and the container includes data
>like filename, operating system, checksums, timestamps, comments, and
>a DEFLATE stream with the compressed data. The overhead is not really
>useful in this context, [...]

I disagree.

The overhead is minute, for instance the filename is optional and seldomly
used in HTTP context.

The CRC32 it brings is a very good integrity check which suprisingly
often uncovers trouble.

Gzip further has the advantage that there are plenty of command line
tools available for it, whereas deflate is quite hard to produce with
regular tools.

After considerable research, I decided to only support gzip in Varnish,
and I have only ever had one user ask for deflate, and that was based
on somebody raising the same bogus "overhead" argument as you do above.

If anything deflate should die.

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Received on Thursday, 20 February 2014 20:05:15 UTC