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If rar is free (not sure if it is, don't remember..) I wouldn't mind using it.

The point (for the package creator) is that the tool to make the package is generic, and available on multiple platforms. It does not have to be the most generic, nor most available tool.

Actually, I took for granted Andre meant something like rar, but.. on second read.. he doesn't say specifically.

-ak

17.11.2004 kello 00:14, Ivan Kolev kirjoitti:

 Andre Carregal wrote:

We are aiming on an easy deployable format for Kepler applications, but LAR
could be used anywhere that needs to make things more compact.
Basically it allows someone to transparently access files (with require,
loadfile and io.open) inside the .lar archive. For example:
io.open ("/a/b/c.lua")
would work for any of
/a/b/c.lua
/a/b.lar (with c.lua zipped)
/a.lar (with b/c.lua zipped)
Andre

Exactly! I forgot to mention in my previous post that in this case Zip is used not as much for the compression, as for the virtual file system that it creates inside the .zip file. Another common option for virtual file systems (as used in games, for example) is encryption. So it would be wise to have an option to add some sort of filter to the .LAR reader/creator... BTW, I talk about Zip because it is a common tool. It could be tar as well (though it's not so common on Windows). But it's not a good idea to have a completely new archive format, because we'll lose the easy archive creation/browsing/modification that a tool like Zip provides. I suppose Java picked Zip for the same reason. (It's a pity that Zip rules the archiving world when there are much better solutions like Rar, but that's a completely different topic).

Just tossing ideas around ;)
Ivan