Request for Features/Ideas: A std.archive package

[Liam McSherry via Digitalmars-d]

On Sunday, 17 May 2015 at 20:03:02 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> 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.

I think .a just fell in to relative obscurity after .tar came 
about, especially since .tar can store much longer file names 
(100 bytes + 155 bytes of prefix/path, vs .a's 16 bytes). Having 
support for it in Phobos out-of-the-box would probably be useful 
for anyone writing a compiler/linker, though.

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

If this is in response to "stream-based," apologies, I mustn't 
have made it clear what I meant. "Stream" was used for want of a 
better word, as Zlib/Gzip/etc store data as one big "stream" of 
data, while Zip/Tar/etc structure their data in to files and the 
like.