Mail Archives: djgpp/1992/08/05/15:02:57
>Unless you distribute unzip with djgpp, you are not using unzip in a
>commercial product. So I don't believe the above copyright should be
>a problem.
The problem is that I ship djgpp on floppies to some folks, and must
include the decompressor. Other companies do the same. I currently
do not ship a decompressor.
>As an alternative to zip or zoo, you could use something like tar or
>cpio to make archives, and use compress or freeze to compress the
>archives. You'll probably end up with better compression in the
>process, since you're compressing the whole thing at once.
Without a special program (djtarx?) you can't extract a single file
from a .tar.Z file, since two programs are required. Maybe adding compression
to djtarx is a better solution?
>1. I agree that a decent archiver should handle empty directories, and
> zip and zoo currently do not. I guess that's one reason to switch
> to cpio or tar. Are there any empty directories in the djgpp
> distribution?
The objs and p_objs directories in the libsrc directory. The
makefiles currently build them, but they should be produced at the
user's site on installation.
>2. I think an archiver should store exactly what you give it. If you
> want to convert the format of a text file, use a program that is
> made to do that. Thus, I don't think text vs. binary should be an
> issue for an archiver.
Converting MS-DOS text files to Unix format saves space.
>3. Arbitrary comments and descriptions can be placed in a file, and
> the file placed in the archive. Why should an archiver have to
> do any more than this?
The comments tell you *how* to unpack, or what version is in there, or
any information you might need *before* you unpack, like which
directory to be in when you do so.
>4. Rename as files are added. I guess I don't see why you'd want to
> do this, but I agree that existing archivers can't do it. Most
> will allow an individual file to be extracted to standard output,
> so you can send it to whatever file you want, but that would be
> tedious to do for many files.
The point was to rename the *directories* so that you can build the
archive from one structure, and have it unpack in another.
>5. Sounds like you want to split an archive up on multiple floppies,
> without having to put it together on a hard disk first. This would
> be nice, and is not available from most archivers. But I do okay
> with split to split up a big archive, and cat to put it together.
This only works if you have enough hard drive, which some users may
not.
DJ
dj AT ctron DOT com
Life is a banana.
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