Hello, Jerome Shidel via Freedos-devel <freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote: > > 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.
The UNZIP.EXE in unz600x3.exe should work without 32bit processors. > > 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 > [2] > 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 > > _______________________________________________ > Freedos-devel mailing list > Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
