Mail Archives: djgpp/1996/11/10/14:32:15
In article <01bbce7c$30fbde60$010200c0 AT weiqigao>,
Weiqi Gao <weiqigao AT crl DOT com> wrote:
>Isn't it true that tar cannot do any compression at all, and the
>compression is all done by gzip after an tar file is created (I might be
>wrong here)?
That's correct.
>So the question should rightly be "why are we using PKZIP
>instead of gzip?"
"We" aren't. I'm using Info-Zip. So, I believe, are the djgpp
developers.
>The answer to that question probably is "PKZIP is a better program than
>gzip."
Better how? They're different. Zip (PK- or Info-) is a better archive
program, because gzip isn't an archive program. Contrariwise, gzip is a
better in-place compression program because zip isn't an in-place
compression program.
>As to claims made in earlier articles in this thread that PKZIP is easier
>to learn than tar, I must disagree. I must also disagree that PKZIP is
>more readily available than tar.
I suspect that more people have PKZip already installed on their systems
than have tar already installed. Especially potential djgpp users.
>I know at least five operating systems that included a tar command in its
>standard configuration. I know of NO operating systems that included a
>PKZIP command. I don't know how much your copy of PKZIP costed you, but
>mine was $49.00. tar is free as far as I know.
PKZip is free for personal use, $49 for commercial use. Info-Zip is
free and GPL'd. Info-Zip runs on as many platforms as gzip--in fact,
gzip is a derivative of Info-Zip, which is a PKZip clone designed with
the help of Phil Katz (PK) to run on UNIX, VMS, Mac, Amiga, and various
other platforms.
I only know of one OS that comes with tar, although that OS (UNIX) comes
in many flavors. I don't know of any that come with any flavor of zip
except Linux. However, tar and gzip and zip are all about equally
available and free on any OS you care to name, including DOS, which is
really the only OS that matters when we're talking about delivering
djgpp. Tar doesn't come with DOS.
>Ease of learning is, in my opinion, not an issue here, because both can be
>done within a few days or two. But if you really want to judge PKZIP and
>tar on that ground, I'd say PKZIP is harder to learn because it has a
>longer manual. Simply reading the whole thing takes longer.
Days?? I've never seen a PKZip manual, but it only took me a few
minutes to figure out how to use it. It took me more minutes, but still
only minutes, to figure out tar.
[infozip] unzip zipfile
[pkzip] pkunzip -d zipfile
[tar+gzip] gunzip -c tarfile.gz | tar -xf -
or gunzip tarfile.gz <enter> tar -xf tarfile
For ease of use in unpacking djgpp, I'd say Info-zip wins (it's almost
intuitive), followed by PKZip, followed by tar+gzip, the most confusing.
This isn't even counting GUI-based packages like Winzip. Most of the
features of PKZip are irrelevant to the average user. And zip, at
least, doesn't default to using the tape drive!! :-)
That said, I think that the idea of providing the binary packages as .zip
files and the source packages as .tgz files is a good one. If anyone is
counting votes, there's my vote. OTOH, it might be more confusing, and
more hassle for the maintainers, so I won't whine if my vote is
overlooked.
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