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

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Thursday, December 22, 2011 01:53:00 Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> If you're a programmer, or even just a power user, you have absolutely no
> excuse not to *already* have a 7z-capable program installed.
> 
> Christ, even the "least-common-denominator" piracy scene has standardized on
> rar which has *exactly* the same accessibility level as 7z. (All the major
> rar programs on windows already support 7z, and on unix, getting 7z is a
> one-liner, no harder than getting rar: On debian-based: "sudo apt-get
> install p7zip-full" - *if* it isn't already installed by default, which it
> often is.)
> 
> I'm normally one of the biggest fans of "don't exclude anyone", but what the
> hell programmer is limited to whatever archive support just happens to be
> built into Windows? Seriously, who *doesn't* have at the very least WinRAR,
> or something akin to it?
> 
> I'm personally ok with DMD coming in zip, but zip's alleged ubiquity is just
> not a valid reason.

I don't even know the last time that I saw a 7zip file. They're incredibly rare 
in my experience. I probably have a program installed on my system which will 
open them, since I'm running Linux, and it would have been easy enough to have 
that pulled in with the package manager for something-or-other, but I just 
don't see those kind of files, and it wouldn't surprise me at all to see 
developers' boxes without the ability to open them - especially Windows boxes, 
where you'd have to go find such a program and install yourself as opposed to 
it getting pulled in by the package manager.

If you're trying to have an archival format that pretty much any computer can 
open out of the box, zip is the only option. If you're restricting yourself to 
Linux computers specifically, there are definitely more options, but Windows can 
only handle zip files. For all other archival formats, the user has to track 
down a program which can handle them. No, that's not hard, but it _does_ raise 
the bar of entry somewhat, and there's really nothing wrong with using zip. 
The problem is the slow server (though breaking up the package for each OS 
would help further).l

- Jonathan M Davis