RE: [boost] Re: Unzipping the Boost distro

From: Ferdinand Prantl (ferdipr_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-12-13 15:37:18

> From: David Abrahams
> Ferdinand Prantl wrote:
> >> From: boost-bounces_at_[hidden]
> >> [mailto:boost-bounces_at_[hidden]] On Behalf Of David Abrahams
> >> 
> >> I just downloaded boost-1.32.0 and started to unzip it with the 
> >> built-in facilities in Windows XP; the OS reported it was going to 
> >> take 50 minutes and it was *crawling*.  Using cygwin's 
> unzip tool it 
> >> was done in under a minute.
> >> 
> >> I'm thinking we should stop distributing raw .zip files without an 
> >> extractor...
> > 
> > Hmm, I have never tried it. I always use Info-Zip's unzip or the 
> 
> That's what I mean.  I used the built-in unzipper in the Win 
> XP file manager.

OK, I tried it with the WinXP extractor in the explorer (I used
the copy&paste files method). It estimated at first 25 minutes,
after a minute only 9 minutes and it finished after 20 minutes,
wonderful... ;-)

My machine is P4 2 GHz with 80 GB seagate / 2MB cache
Norton antivirus and unbelievably messed up Windows installation ;-)

Just to display the archive content (like a folder content) takes
relatively long. I am not sure why but I would guess that it could
be in the implementation of the shell namespace extension for
archives in windows xp. It can be quite expensive to build the
structure of shell item nodes for every file/folder in the archive, if
the archive contains so many items. They should be created
on demand, I faced the problem in my shell extension too. But
without the source code I cannot guess. For example WinRAR
shell extension "Extract Here" extracts the zip file quick - 2 minutes
(it has no explore option, it is only a context menu shell extension)
and I believe WinZIP or 7ZIP will have similar results.

Btw., rd /q/s xxx is also faster that deleting using the explorer.

I understand, that the zip distribution is primarily for the windows
users and such slowness is painful. Nevertheless, a crappy
implementation of some plugin in OS would annoy only the users
who use it, the others can follow the recommendation from the
boost download page, and download an alternative unzipping
tool, for example from the info-zip site.

There is no problem in the zipped file, it's just too big :-)
An alternative would be a self-extracting archive, which
can be produced by some free tools as well.

Ferda