Also, it makes it easier to append new files to an existing zip archive. No need to adjust an existing header (and potentially slide the whole archive around if the header size changes), just append the data and append a new footer.
Interestingly, a useful strategy for tape too, though zip is not generally considered tape friendly.
Re:Why HTTP/3 is eating the world
by athanagor2 on Friday October 06, 2023 @05:51AM
(#37788793)
This is exactly what Justine Tunney's redbean does.
But the thing is that the executable can be anything, so if what you want to do is to bundle an arbitrary application plus all its resources into a single file, all you need to do is zip up the resources and append the zipfile to the compiled executable. Then at runtime the application opens its own $0 as a zipfile. It Just Works.