Well, it's been a total failure

[Walter Bright]

Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> On 09/13/2010 07:47 PM, Walter Bright wrote:
>> zip on unix has no way to set the Windows attributes, and zip on Windows
>> has no way to set the unix attributes. Both have attributes that have no
>> analogs on the other. Both have no way to set the non-native attributes.
> 
> I didn't know there is an executable attribute on Windows.

There isn't. But there are system, hidden, and archive attribute bits that have 
no analog on unix. Not that we use any of those bits, I'm just arguing the point 
that unix utilities are not always better - in this case, they have the same 
deficiency. Googling this particular issue brings up pages where people are told 
to use python scripts to set the attributes in a zip file.

It's also nice to eat our own dogfood, and do something useful with std.zip.

> Anyhow, I guess that underlines the necessity to do what everybody does 
> - assemble the installer on the distribution platform, and have it only 
> contain the files for that platform. An increasingly large audience is 
> looking at us, and we should avoid being provincial. I'm not even sure 
> why we're having this discussion - there should be no debate here: we do 
> what people do. This reminds me of the discussion of yesteryear - people 
> were complaining about C++ files in dmd having the .c extension, and the 
> right answer would have been to change the blessed thing to be like 
> everybody else has it, instead of finding arguments on why it worked the 
> way it was.

Hard to argue with that.