| From: | Alexander G. M. Smith |
| Date: | 10 Sep 2000 at 19:59:37 |
| Subject: | Re: AMIOPEN: Compressed archive formats and Installers |
David Trollope <dave.trollope@worldnet.att.net> wrote
on Fri, 08 Sep 2000 22:23:06 -0500:
>> An even easier way than datatypes - use a compressed file system.
>> There is already a read only ZIP file system, which the installer
>> could use and just look for key installation files in known
>> directories / file names within the ZIP (or other) virtual drive.
>> When a new compression format comes along, just install a new
>> file system driver for it, and your old installer keeps on working.
>
> I agree that a ZIP filesystem would be good, but since when
> could you drop the filesystem in to a directory? and have it
> work for any zip file? data types don't force you to create
> a mount point, and mount the filesystem each time.
The installer would know how to mount archive files (Zip or
otherwise) at a temporary mount point. Might need an extra
API call for program controlled mounting of archives. Or maybe
the OS can hide it - if you use directory calls (like
"cd Archive.zip") on a Zip archive then the OS automatically
mounts it and uses it as a directory, and unmounts it when no
references remain. Hmmm, that would be cool.
> You just drop the datatype in to the dir, and AddDataType
> ... Then any application that uses datatypes can read any
> file from anywhere. What could be easier?
Well, we'd need a similarly easy way of installing and finding
new file systems. Maybe a directory containing the code for
all the available file systems?
> Bah humbug to creating mount points per zip archive and
> mounting it. They only get in the way when you forget to
> delete them again after unmounting it of course. unmounting?
The Installer would do all that for the user. The user just
points the Installer at the archive and lets it do the rest.
One nice advantage of file systems is that you can distribute
patches easily. If the Merge file system does what I think
it does, you can Merge the original zip with the patch zip and
the Installer doesn't have to do anything extra. The patch
zip contains just replacements and new files overriding the
original zip's files (uses same directory structure) and they
get merged by the OS / filesystems.
- Alex
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