Installation Addons not in a zip type folder

[pascal 2010]

How to make an addon that is not in a zip folder work ?
like the international space station by thorton.

 

[TSPenguin]

Thorton uses an alternative to zip called rar. It is more efficient in most cases and is actually more commonly used than zip. Many well known zip programs can handle rars too, like 7zip. The best rar handler comes from rarlabs.
They just released WinRAR 4.0.

 

[MJR]

Either way, these files will be compressed into structural folders specifying textures, meshes, etc.

 

[Hielor]

Moral of the story: if you want people to use your addons, use .zip.

 

[Zatnikitelman]

I'd actually suggest 7zip for extracting rar (and other) files. Unlike WinRAR which requires a license purchase after a time, 7zip is free (and open source).

 

[Loru]

I use Total Commander - Succesor to the old Norton Commander file manager.
It supports:

ZIP, ARJ, LZH, RAR, UC2, TAR, GZ, CAB and ACE archives by default and with little effort 7 zip also.

One flaw - it's commercial software that costs $50 but I found it too usefull to abandon it.

 

[Wishbone]

Rar is pretty much standard this side of the Iron Curtain. However, worldwide audience may even be unaware that the Iron Curtain existed, so I pack with zip to make installation slightly less daunting.

 

[hribek]

That reminds me - putting a readme.txt file in the root of the archive or anywhere else is kinda funny, it should have a unique name. When I unpack addons they keep overwriting each others' readme files. I'd think it's best to make it "Doc\someaddon-readme.txt" or so.

I generally frown on addons that don't have the standard unpack&go directory structure, too. It's even faster than telling some installer where to put the files

 

[emarkay]

Us Linux folks can uncompress them all (Even .CABs), but (at least) Win XPSP3 gags-n-pukes on .RAR files - and woe to those that "Use the web to search for appropriate program..."!

A good developer always has a"virgin" system to test all things developed...

 

[RisingFury]

Use RAR, people! It's more efficient in most cases, including compressing video.

 

[Izack]

Use RAR, people! It's more efficient in most cases, including compressing video.

As plenty have already said, it requires extra software. With ZIP, anyone who can play Orbiter can open the addon (Windows users have winzip, and apparently Linux users can open anything...?)

Sure, in a perfect world where everyone could handle minor technical difficulties like "How do I open this file??" RAR would be standard and we'd all be happy with our extended disk space, but in reality it creates many problems like this one for those who might not understand these things so well.

 

[Hielor]

Use RAR, people! It's more efficient in most cases, including compressing video.

As I've stated dozens of times before: If you actually want people to use your addons, use .zip.

If you want to be a snob about compression efficiency (which is completely irrelevant for the filesizes of the vast majority of Orbiter addons) and don't care if everyone who wants to use your addon actually can, use something else.