Re: git-archive loses path info when opened with Winzip?

[Rogan Dawes <lists@dawes.za.net>]

René Scharfe wrote:
> Rogan Dawes schrieb:
>> Hi folks,
>>
>> I have noticed something strange with "git-archive"-created tarballs. It
>> seems that Winzip has trouble parsing the paths for certain files
>> correctly.
>>
>> The symptom is that Winzip shows some files as having been created at
>> the "top level" of the zip, without any path at all, while the rest of
>> the files are within their correct directory structure.
>>
>> I have attached a screenshot of a gitweb-created snapshot opened in
>> Winzip 9.0 SR1 (build 6224), but it apparently happens in other (more
>> recent) versions of Winzip as well.
> 
> Oh, well.
> 
> Each file in a tar archive has at least a 512-byte header.  This header
> contains a name field, 100 bytes long.  When it became clear that it
> would be nice to support file names longer than 100 characters, another
> 155 bytes in the header was designated as a prefix field (see tar.h).

[snip]
> In any case, there are better options:
> 
>   - Don't use long file names (just kidding :).
>   - Use a tar extractor that understands the prefix field, e.g. 7-Zip.
>   - Use zip (but beware of its 65535 bytes name length limit! ;).
>   - File a bug report with WinZip.
> 
> René
> 

Hi René,

Thanks for the detailed explanation. I guess I should file a bug report 
with WinZip, although that won't solve the problem for most of the 
population.

My best bet seems to be to provide the option to create Zip files rather 
than tarballs (i.e. upgrade my gitweb.cgi to something more recent).

Regards,

Rogan