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

> 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).

> 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
>