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xar packages

Good afternoon!
I have been mulling over an idea to try and push Radmind towards using a common package format with Apple's installer, in the hopes that my workflow in creating images can be streamlined. This was partially inspired some time ago when I read that the new .pkg flat files used xar.

However my enthusiasm was somewhat dashed today when I took apart a sample flat-file .pkg today and discovered that the format has not seemingly used the xar format for anything truly useful. I was hoping that it would use the xar system to store a series of files, and that I could piggy-back on this hierarchy by adding more meta-data to get the couple of other markers that Radmind needs (things like negative transcripts and the like). But instead I have found that inside the xar package are three files: a PackageInfo file, a BOM, and a gziped cpio file.... so pretty much exactly what I would have found in the folder version of a .pkg.

That is rather disappointing, and seems like a waste of a perfectly good opportunity, and of the wonderfull facilities offered by xar. I do understand that the .pkg system does need to also work for "special" objects in the system (devices, etc) that cpio has been extended to handle, but it is a real disappointment that this requirement has hamstrung the adoption of xar as a really useful way of improving the openness of the .pkg format.

Does anyone have and good news for me? Am I missing something? Or are my visions of making Radmind overloads merge with .pkg's destined for failure?
--
Karl Kuehn
email@hidden



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