Re: BootX and the Stuffit Fiasco.
On Thursday 22 February 2001 10:28, Advertising wrote:
> I believe the Stuffit self-expanding archive format works across the
> majority of the MacOS spectrum. (much wider that DebianPPC) Is there a
> reason not to use that file format for the Debian PowerMac install items?
Yes, the reason is that mac files aren't as simple as files on other
operating sysems, they have two forks, the Data fork and the Resource fork.
The Data fork is just like any other file, but if the resource fork isn't
stored in the data fork somehow, things get screwed up very quickly, if
you're transferring the files over a protocol that doesn't grok resource
forks.
Stuffit crams both forks into one file. If it were self extracting, it'd have
to forks (or, SHOULD). A lot of browsers will automatically take care of .hqx
though, which might be a good reason to use a binhex'd self extracting
archive. (even though most everyone knows .bin is cooler)
Benh also used to provide bootx in a netatalk format tarball, i don't know if
he still does.
I'm afraid the emphasis here should be compatability at the expense of all
else.. if you have a bare system which has to have macos in order to boot
linux, you're already in non-free land, it's a bad idea to make people go
even further out of their way just to boot into linux. this is especially
true of net installs, when a cd is just not an option for some unfortunate
reason.
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