Request for Features/Ideas: A std.archive package

[Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d]

On 5/17/2015 10:02 AM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> On 5/17/15 9:32 AM, Liam McSherry wrote:
>> I'd like to know whether there would be demand for such a package, and
>> what the community would want in terms of the API and features. I
>> haven't yet written any code for the package as the API is going to be
>> one of the most important parts, and I thought it would be best to have
>> agreement on what is wanted before starting on it.
>
> That'd be great. A few thoughts: (a) should use ranges through and through; (b)
> might be interesting to allow libarchive http://www.libarchive.org as engine.
> That's BSD licensed, but we can interface with it. Or at least use it as
> reference for low-level design. -- Andrei

I've thought about making such a package many times. A couple "archives" nobody 
ever thinks about are .lib and .a archives. Interestingly, they work pretty much 
just like .zip files, except without compression.

In fact, if I was still working on linkers, I'd use .zip as the library format!

Of course, like idiots, programmers keep inventing (badly) new archive formats.

Oh, and lest I forget, it should not have a streaming interface. It should have 
a range interface.