A little while back, a user submitted a request to include unzip on the install media[1].
While this seems like a simple and straight-forward request that could be easily satisfied, there are a few complications. First let me say, that ZIP is present. It is provided for the user to perform a compressed backup of possible existing OS files when the installer runs in advanced mode. If the user performs the install in “normal” mode, the installer does not provide the “compressed backup” as an additional option and will simply make a copy of the files before replacing them. The version of ZIP used has no special memory or CPU requirements and is part of the standard ZIP package[2]. This cannot be said for the version of UNZIP included in the UNZIP package[3]. It requires a 386 and a DPMI extender. Furthermore, it is not used by the installer. However with a little effort, FDINST is present and could be used to extract files. Granted, that is neither simple or easy for someone who does not know what would be required to use FDINST. While it is possible, it really is not practical to use it as an alternative. But, there are a few complications and potentially bad side effects to simply including the current UNZIP. Nearly all of which are related to the DOS extender. It relies on CWSDPMI. CWSDMPI insists on creating a swap file even when there is no demand for additional memory. The location of the file is hard-coded into the binary. While, UNZIP can usually extract files without needing that swap, it will complain if the specified drive does not exists. If the hard-coded drive does exist, then the swap is created automatically. As far as I know, there is no ability to provide CWSDPMI with a command line option to temporarily use an alternate location. I think that you must use the configuration tools for CWSDMPI to change the hard-coded location for the swap. It is not possible to use that tool to change the drive when running from the read only CD-ROM filesystem. I think it is a very bad idea to simply just include the current UNZIP. Primarily, because one of the uses for the OS boot media is maintenance and data recovery. If the user is performing data recovery, the absolute last thing they would want is to use UNZIP and have CWSDPMI create a swap file on their hard disk and modify the drive. That action could cause the loss of the very data they may be trying to save. I do have a couple potential ways this may be resolved. But, I would like your thoughts on this matter first. :-) [1] https://gitlab.com/FreeDOS/issue-reporting/-/issues/54 <https://gitlab.com/FreeDOS/issue-reporting/-/issues/54> [2] https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/repositories/latest/html/en/archiver/zip/20250410.1/index.html <https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/repositories/latest/html/en/archiver/zip/20250410.1/index.html> [3] https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/repositories/latest/html/en/archiver/unzip/20250410.1/index.html <https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/repositories/latest/html/en/archiver/unzip/20250410.1/index.html>
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