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Re: Standard OS X Compression format
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Re: Standard OS X Compression format


  • Subject: Re: Standard OS X Compression format
  • From: Scott Anguish <email@hidden>
  • Date: Sat, 17 Nov 2001 06:45:56 -0500

Again.. the problem with this is that tar is designed as a sequential access format.

If you want to extract a single file, you must go through the entire archive till you get to that file... and you can't get a simple list without traversing it either.. now, add the gzip on top of that.. and it's a bunch of overhead.


the xpak format was designed with expandability in mind, and with support for mac stuff, as well as unix stuff (and other.. it's really open ended)... and to be able to allow users of the format quick access to file listings without overhead, and to be able to decompress and extract a single file without any severe penalties regardless of it's location in the archive.

http://www.stepwise.com/Software/xpak

has the speck.. there are a couple of new people interested in helping out now... although I've not had time to dig up what is needed to help them quite yet.. hopefully this weekend.

The format is solid.. ready to go.. it's had about a year of discussion, comments, additions, etc... we need someone who can write the base implementation.

(I'm just too swamped to do it)

On Friday, November 16, 2001, at 12:05 PM, Andrew J. Hobbs wrote:

<asbestos_underwear>
Rather than a new "standard", going with something like tar.gz would be much preferable. True, it doesn't understand resource forks, but preferred mode for OS X is resource in data fork of a seperate file. Perhaps modifying (and providing patches back) to the existing utilities to gracefully handle forks.

Something like this:
Bundle files into the tar the same as if OS X was sticking files onto a UFS or foreign NFS drive, by putting resources in an external file. When decoding, automatically reassemble if the filesystem supports forks, or leave in the accepted format on others.

Standards are a good thing taken in moderation. I'd rather see an existing, living standard extended (with feeds back to the standard), than YACS (Yet Another Custom Standard).
</asbestos_underwear>


References: 
 >Re: Standard OS X Compression format (From: "Andrew J. Hobbs" <email@hidden>)

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