[fpc-devel] Interface to compressed files and archives

[Michael.VanCanneyt at Wisa.be]

On Thu, 30 Dec 2004, DrDiettrich wrote:

> Hi there,
> 
> I'm new to this list and want to introduce myself and my intended
> contributions to FreePascal.
> 
> My name is Dr. Hans-Peter Diettrich, and I live in Flensburg (Germany).
> For brevity I use to sign my messages as DoDi. My main interests are
> decompilers and (tools for) porting code. Usually I work with Delphi,
> but this behaviour may change ;-)
> 
> Recently I came across some interesting library modules of FPC, that I
> want to use in my own projects. Some of these modules deserve updates,
> in general and for use with Delphi, and I want to contribute my
> according work to the FPC community.
> 
> Currently I'm implementing an RPM clone for Windows, which in detail
> should support source rpm's, better than the original RPM. Hereby I have
> to deal with compressed files in various formats (gzip, bzip2), and
> archive files (cpio, tar...).  I've already update or implemented some
> of these modules, now I want to define a common interface and API for
> compressed and archive streams, based on TStreams. The zstream unit is
> dedicated to a single compressor, but it has an handy name. How should I
> name a more general unit, would "zstreams" be acceptable?
> 
> My idea of a general (de-)compression interface is as follows:
> 

Your idea is already implemented in Abbrevia from TurboPower. 
Abbrevia is open source, and is maintained on SourceForge. 
Free Pascal has a copy of it that compiles in CVS, check out
contrib/abbrevia

Michael.