Message-Id: <199611090739.UAA04820@papaioea.manawatu.gen.nz>
Comments: Authenticated sender is <malcolm AT mail DOT manawatu DOT gen DOT nz>
From: "Malcolm Taylor" <malcolm AT manawatu DOT gen DOT nz>
Organization: Grafik Software
To: "John M. Aldrich" <fighteer AT cs DOT com>, fighteer AT cs DOT com, djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Date: Sat, 9 Nov 1996 20:38:12 +1200
Subject: Re: Why not to use 'tar' before packing DJGPP?
Reply-to: malcolm AT manawatu DOT gen DOT nz

> George Foot wrote:
> > Not that I really understand tar anyway, but those compression ratios
> > look good... maybe you could just tar the source files? People who are
> > interested in the source code of the compiler are more likely to know
> > what they're doing with tar anyway.
> 
> That's not such a bad idea.  After all, if they get the source, then
> I imagine you
> would get similar (but not identical) results if you took one of the
> distribution .zip files and re-zipped it.  I have known this to reduce a
> zipfile's size by several percent.

The best way is to zip with no compression, then re-zip the resulting 
zip-file.
Anyway if the point is to reduce the size of the archives, then why 
not go for a better archiver? The compression algorithm in zip is 
around 3-4 years old technologically speaking, and there are many far 
better archivers available today that dispense the need for tarring 
(they use what called solid archiving). The entire djgpp distribution 
could probably be compressed to around a half to a third the zipped 
size using RKIVE or ACB. This is an extreme case though as RKIVE 
requires 8Mb and ACB 16Mb to work well, so aren't really suited to 
the 'everyone can use' category, but there are other more generally 
usable compressors (eg the new JAR from the maker of ARJ).
 
> > What happened to the installer, anyway? I remember seeing here long ago a
> > thread on this topic... to me, it seems a good idea. DJGPP seems to have
> > moved from being a Unix-style compiler with warnings in the readmes
> > saying 'don't even consider learning to program on this' to a friendly
> > compiler anyone can use. An installation utility would improve this
> > appearance still further.
> 
> You aren't mistaken; there was a thread and it led to some very good
> thinking on the part of a number of people.  The installer is currently
> in development by Mark Habersack, and it will work concurrently with an
> installation diagnostic utility being developed by yours truly.  Both
> programs are in alpha right now, but I expect that we will be able to
> release code for public evaluation fairly soon.

You could put the compression straight into the installer itself, and 
hence enable the use of tar or something else without anyone having 
to be too troubled by it.
One of the biggest problems with this is that it would require a 
complete switch to the new archive format, or doubling up of archives 
(old and new format) which would probably not sit well with DJ or the 
Simtel.Net maintainers.
 
Malcolm