2009-03-11

On Self-extracting archives

Microsoft is still favoring self-extracting archives over normal archives. They probably want to sustain the antivirus software market by providing files capable of containing computer viruses and not having a sandbox to run these files by default in their badly designed "operating" systems.

Microsoft goes over to extremes like having a self-extracting EXE file that contains a CAB file that contains a ZIP file that contains the actual files (see for example Microsoft KB 303436 where they distribute such a file) (maybe they are so clueless that they think developers do not know what a ZIP file is and how to unpack it)

One way to prevent Microsoft incompetence (or maybe corruption) is to have in proper operating system never execute EXE files outside a sandbox and by default detect self-extracting archives (by file contents inspection instead of just only the file extension) and unpack them directly by the installed unarchiving software.

No comments: