Bug#481505: please distribute usr/lib/libmarc-charset-perl/Table.pag as a sparse file

[Daniel Kahn Gillmor]

Package: libmarc-charset-perl
Version: 0.98-2
Severity: normal

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I tried to install libmarc-charset-perl on a machine with a small
disk, and it wants to chew up a full 410MB.  If
/usr/lib/libmarc-charset-perl/Table.pag was distributed as a sparse
file, it would be no more than 30MB.  This is a huge difference.
Here's a demonstration of a very crude attempt to make the file
sparse, and a comparison of the 380MB saved:

[0 dkg at squeak ~]$ dpkg --extract /var/cache/apt/archives/libmarc-charset-perl_0.98-2_i386.deb tmp/libmarc-charset-perl
[0 dkg at squeak ~]$ cp --sparse=always tmp/libmarc-charset-perl/usr/lib/libmarc-charset-perl/Table.pag{,.sparse}
[0 dkg at squeak ~]$ du -sh tmp/libmarc-charset-perl/usr/lib/libmarc-charset-perl/Table.pag{,.sparse}
391M	tmp/libmarc-charset-perl/usr/lib/libmarc-charset-perl/Table.pag
7.7M	tmp/libmarc-charset-perl/usr/lib/libmarc-charset-perl/Table.pag.sparse
[0 dkg at squeak ~]$

I don't know how to distribute a file as a sparse file within the .deb
framework, but if it's possible, i'd like to learn.

Thanks for packaging MARC::Charset for debian!

Regards,

	--dkg

- -- System Information:
Debian Release: lenny/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing'), (200, 'unstable'), (101, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.24-1-686 (SMP w/1 CPU core)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages libmarc-charset-perl depends on:
ii  libclass-accessor-perl       0.31-2      Automated accessor generator
ii  libxml-sax-perl              0.16+dfsg-3 Perl module for using and building
ii  perl                         5.8.8-12    Larry Wall's Practical Extraction 

libmarc-charset-perl recommends no packages.

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