Could we use something better than zip for the dmd package?

[Vladimir Panteleev]

On Thursday, 22 December 2011 at 17:35:09 UTC, Andrei 
Alexandrescu wrote:
>> Ok then, if you're claiming that I'm wrong and a programmer 
>> *does* have a
>> legitimate excuse for not having a 7z-capable program, perhaps 
>> you could
>> state what that legitimate excuse is instead of merely being 
>> contradictory?
>
> There are some funny consequences to this. If something 
> completely pisses you off, it might actually be an indication 
> we're doing something right. And if you say something is 
> perfect for you, that's almost always a reason to worry.

Oof, I think saying that here was uncalled for.

But seriously, I think this discussion is neglecting to account 
for the subjective aspects, mainly segmentation by operating 
system. This decade cross-platform software is becoming more 
ubiquitous, but it wasn't that long ago that GUI applications 
(the only kind regular users care about) that worked on different 
major platforms were exceedingly rare - and when you switched 
operating systems, you practically always had to simply look for 
analogies for the software you used on the old system. By this 
follows that the major OSes had their own established software 
packaging methods - installers and archives of various sorts on 
Windows, .dmg / .pkg / .sit for OS X, and tarballs for POSIX. 
Windows inherits much of its user base (and thus, user 
mannerisms) from the DOS days, back when there were dozens of 
archivers in common use (anyone remembers ARC, ARJ, LHA?). RAR 
and ZIP survived the test of time, with 7-Zip quickly gaining 
traction after its appearance due to improved compression 
algorithms.

I know Nick uses Windows, same as myself, and from last I heard 
Andrei uses a Mac. So, it's no wonder that there's such a huge 
disconnect of opinion - the Mac software ecosystem lived (and 
still lives, to some extent) in its own different world.