From: "W. Kent Starr" <elderburn@...>
Date: 2001-11-02T00:18:25+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:24087] Re: RubyGems Discussion

Robert Feldt wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 1 Nov 2001, Michael Neumann wrote:
> 
> > > Ok, but how can this be used with Ryan's scheme with metadata? Is there
> > > some way you can attach info to zip archive which winzip et al will not
> > > look at?
> >
> > Why does it matter that winzip can look at the meta data?
> > For example *BSD binary packages contain meta data files named
> > +CONTENTS +COMMENT +DESC +BUILD_INFO etc. inside a .tar.gz file.
> >
> It doesn't; I was to deep down in my own thoughts...
> 
> A potential drawback with using an established zip/tar.gz format is that
> people might make gems without metadata since they've heard/read that
> "Ruby's gems files are ordinary zip files". But it might only be a minor
> problem...
> 
> /Robert

An possible answer to that would be creation of a packaging utility
(GemCutter?) included with RubyGem. Most people would use that; those
who choose to venture into the guts of hand rolling their own gem files
would presumably be well aware of the caveats.

Regards,

Kent Starr
elderburn@mindspring.com