On Wed, Jul 15, 2020 at 07:52:27PM +0200, David Haller wrote: > ==== dev-python/rarfile/rarfile-3.1.ebuild ==== > RDEPEND="compressed? ( || ( app-arch/unrar app-arch/rar ) )" > ====
This USE-flag strikes me as slightly nondescript:
$ ash-euses rarfile:compressed
dev-python/rarfile:compressed - Enables the module to support compressed v3
archives by calling the app-arch/unrar.
Does this mean that rarfile is compatible with pre-version#3 archives without
the `compressed` flag ? Regardless, the point remains that RAR is a proprietary
format, which inevitably is locked to similarly proprietary (or non-free to some
extent) software. According to [1] and [2], there does exist an attempt at a
GPL'd implementation of RAR, however its development has since ceased, and it
only supports up to v2 archives.
It seems like every reasonably modern archiving software supporting RAR does so
via E. Roshal's `unrar`, disallowing the creation of a RAR-creation utility [3].
[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAR_(file_format)#Third-party_software_for_extracting_RAR_files
[2] http://www.unrarlib.org/
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PeaZip#Third-party_technologies
--
Ashley Dixon
suugaku.co.uk
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