[tex-live] volunteer to implement lcab compression?

[Karl Berry]

For TL 2004, we want/need to use .cab files instead of .zip files on the
inst (compressed) CD, because .cab is what the Microsoft installer
supports, and Fabrice intends to replace TeXSetup with the MSI.  At the
same time, it is convenient to do the infrastructure rebuilds on our
Unix machines.

There's a program lcab, formerly cablinux, for Linux, which can write
cabinet files.  There are two implementations, one in C and one in Perl.
  http://www.geekshop.be/rien/lcab/

However ... it does not support writing of compressed cab files, which
is, of course, crucial.  Several algorithms are allowed, ZIP is probably
the easiest.  I wrote the author a few days ago but he has not
responded.

Can anyone here volunteer to add compression support to lcab?
Like, soon?  Either in the perl version or the C version, it doesn't
matter as long as it works :).

Of course it's not a matter of implementing a compression algorithm from
scratch, there are plenty of libraries and examples out there.  It just
has to be pulled together in whatever way .cab wants.

We (Sebastian and I) have not found any other programs to write .cab
files under Unix (many programs support reading .cab's).  There is a
library libmspack, but it doesn't yet support compression writing either.

Thanks,
k