From: Bill Kelly <billk@...>
Date: 2001-11-02T01:42:00+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:24096] Re: RubyGems Discussion


From: "Ryan Leavengood" <RyanL@mosaicsoftware.com>
>
[...]
> I also don't think that using the zip file format is needed (well not at
> the moment.)  Compression is minimally useful considering the small size
> of most Ruby libraries and has drawbacks such as added complexity and
> the added time needed to decompress.

Assuming a non-marginal compression ratio is achieved, it should be the
bigger file that loads slower, not the smaller file that is loaded and
decompressed.  According to my own informal tests, anyway - zlib 
decompress is way, way faster than hard drive I/O.

. . . Unless you're referring to a pure ruby implementation of the
decompress . . . :)


> I do find it interesting that even though I never looked at the zip file
> format my two current formats for RubyGems have a certain similarity
> (based on what I saw in an earlier ruby-talk message.)  So actually
> adding a zip file format to the system in the future shouldn't be that
> hard if you guys really want it.  But that doesn't mean you should then
> assume that all gems are in zip format.  I intend to have sufficient
> utilities with the final system that having to resort to using WinZip to
> install or something will not be necessary.

Personally, for whatever it's worth, I'd "vote" for using a standard
format like zip where possible.  I value being able to use standard
tools to examine the contents of files like .jar and .pk3, even 
though I wouldn't (for instance) use a generic zip archiver program
to create the jar file...

Incidentally, it's totally legal to store uncompressed data in zip
files.


Regards,

Bill