Stop providing ZIP versions by default for Linux (make tar.bz2 the default for Linux)

[dlmiles]

This request is make tar.bz2 (or tar.gz) the default distribution format for Linux.

You should also continue to make available to the ZIP version (so you don't break peoples download links).

You should also update ALL documentation as much as possible to reflect the .tar.bz2 version.
Such as pages like this: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/userguide/install-cliv2-linux.html#cliv2-linux-install

You should also modify and update the AWS Image Builder Components: arn:aws:imagebuilder:*:aws:component/aws-cli-version-2-linux/1.0.1/1 so that it can locate and find the tar.bz2 version (as well as .zip) in the event that "unzip" command is not present on the EC2 image. Ideally it should detect which archive tool is available tar/bzip2 or unzip before downloading any data.

The rationale on this:

• When building EC2 instances that use Minimal package set by default, they do not support zip/unzip because that is not installed.
• All modern (those younger than 20 years old) Linux distributions I have seen have tar/cpio/gzip/bzip2 installed since the package managers themselves use these archiving and compression formats themselves.
• As an example of this make use of the AWS Image Builder and the Amazon maintained images and components and run builds on all the Linux distributions and customize to include the arn:aws:imagebuilder:*:aws:component/aws-cli-version-2-linux component. See how many of them will actually succeed.
• This is the reason why I shall not be upgrading my AMI image to use aws-cli v2 when I can install the system package aws-cli the Linux distribution vendor provides (which is currently v1). Good luck getting people to upgrade.

Thank you for your consideration.

[stobrien89]

Thanks for the feature request and the additional info, @dlmiles! I'll ask the team to review this.

[brogers-propstream]

I second this for one major reason.

• Multiple EC2 Image Builder Components supplied by Amazon require unzip, but do not install it themselves.

It makes dealing with the Image builder a royal pain since the Amazon supplied components are incomplete.

[stobrien89]

Hi all,

Just discussed this with the team this morning. I don't think we'll make tar.bz2 or tar.gz the default distribution format, but we're definitely open to adding either as an option to choose from. I don't have an estimate for when we'll be able to work on this, but we'll let you know once we have an update!

[dlmiles]

Thanks for your consideration.

I don't support @brogers-propstream (potential suggestion) "but do not install it themselves" which might insinuate to someone that "dnf install unzip" / "apt-get install unzip" should be placed inside the script for arn:aws:imagebuilder:*:aws:component/aws-cli-version-2-linux component. This is a particularly lazy solution.

This is because it doesn't support best practice for building images of not installing per-requisites for no good reason. Maybe this can be addressed by uninstalling it after installation is complete (if it wasn't already on the system, since it is not needed at runtime only at install time).

[stobrien89]

Hi all,

Sorry for missing this up front, but this is close enough to #4842 to be considered a duplicate. That said, this is something we plan to work on sometime in the near future, so keep an eye out on the above issue for updates!

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