Windows 11 adds native support for RAR, 7-Zip, Tar and other archive formats thanks to open-source library::undefined

  • Aux@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Tared compressed files are bad archives. You can’t retrieve a single file without unpacking everything. You can’t add new files or replace contents of existing files without unpacking and repacking everything. They are just very outdated and have poor design. There are no reasons to use them.

    • theneverfox@pawb.social
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      8 months ago

      They’re bad for storing files, but a great way to turn a folder into a file.

      Installers don’t need to be modified or used in part

      • Aux@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Why do you continue talking about installers? That’s not the reason people invented archives and compression.

        • theneverfox@pawb.social
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          8 months ago

          Ok, you have this design, which every installer in the world uses. Some are more compressed, some are signed, some bootstrap a downloader - but at the end of the day, every downloadable installer uses the same basic concept. From Windows installers to dmg to flatpacks to app bundles - same basic idea.

          A tarball is a bunch of files laid end to end, it’s good for one thing and one thing only - treating a bunch of files as one. It’s great at that… If you want to compress it, it’s not context aware enough to let you decrepit them individually - they’re encrypted as one file

          It’s a bad way to store compressed archived info, I’ll grant you that, but it’s a great way to share a program or library to reproduce a bunch of files that make no sense to handle individually.

          For another example, what about the layers of a photo editing program? What about the individual tracks in a music editing program?

          It’s an incredibly useful pattern that is used in countless ways. It’s simple, easy to implement, and used everywhere to great effect

              • Aux@lemmy.world
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                8 months ago

                For fucks sake… That’s what YOU think! And that’s the problem! TAR is a shit archive format. Deal with it.

                • theneverfox@pawb.social
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                  8 months ago

                  LMAO that makes so much sense. No wonder you got all weird when I brought up installers. You’re picturing a file in a folder that contains something you want

                  There’s a lot of kinds of archives.

                  Tarballs don’t suck, they’re just not for you. You can go back to your blissful ignorance of how often you’ve used a tarball seamlessly without realizing it happened, because someone else understood the upside of the tech