using jar.exe for fun and profit

[Kjetil S. Matheussen]

On Tue, 30 Jan 2007, Per Bothner wrote:

> Vadim Nasardinov wrote:
>>  FWIW, if you have Java installed, you can unpack ZIP archives on
>>  Windows like so:
>>
>>   jar xf kawa-1.9.1-src.zip
>>
>>  because JAR files are just fancied up ZIP files.
>>
>>  Come to think of it, this line of reasoning suggests that the
>>  friendliest way to distribute Kawa is to provide kawa-1.9.1-src.jar.
>
> Yes, I considered that (see
> http://sources.redhat.com/ml/kawa/2007-q1/msg00031.html ).
> The downsize is that .zip (.jar) files don't compress as
> well as tar.gz., so both disk space and more importantly
> bandwidth would be worse.
>
> Of course, by that argument I should use bz2 compression.
> However, I don't believe that is as well supported by automake,
> or would that match the GNU standards/recommendations.
> (This concern also applies to .zip.)

I would guess that most people use either winzip, winrar or winace,
and as far as I know, all of those three support both .tar and .gz, so
.tar.gz shouldn't be a problem.