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A comment on Announcing RemoteIE: Test the Latest IE on Windows, Mac OS X, iOS and Android. Parent comment

Re:Announcing RemoteIE: Test the Latest IE on Windows, Mac O... by acdha on Monday November 03, 2014 @03:53PM (#8553414)
RAR isn't an open format and it requires using a different tool with a clunky UI. It's not the end of the world but it's a hassle for very limited file size benefit – Microsoft appears to have gotten in the habit of this back in the day where you needed to create self-extracting archives for people running a version of Windows without integrated ZIP support but now it's a complete anachronism.
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Re:Announcing RemoteIE: Test the Latest IE on Windows, Mac O... by molant on Monday November 03, 2014 @05:54PM (#8554110)
The rar files we have at modern.ie are selfextracting. Just follow the instructions and you shouldn't need to install any other tool :)
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Re:Announcing RemoteIE: Test the Latest IE on Windows, Mac O... by moreati on Tuesday November 04, 2014 @07:14AM (#8556145)
I've always wondered if there's a story behind modern.ie using chunked .rars over e.g. non-chunked .zip.

What were the technical/human constraints that lead to that solution? Was the team agonising over conflicting goals? Or was it as simple as "Alice already knew it"/"Our tool chain already supported it"?

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Re:Announcing RemoteIE: Test the Latest IE on Windows, Mac O... by acdha on Monday November 03, 2014 @07:12PM (#8554428)
That's often but not always true: if you use VMWare on Linux or use an OS which is configured not to run arbitrary executables you can't use the self-extracting file. I certainly wouldn't say those are common problems or insurmountable but they're in the class of things which you simply don't need to worry about with ZIP.
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Re:Announcing RemoteIE: Test the Latest IE on Windows, Mac O... by seanp2k2 on Monday November 03, 2014 @08:51PM (#8554777)
What's wrong with .tar.gz like most other *nix software uses for downloads?
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Re:Announcing RemoteIE: Test the Latest IE on Windows, Mac O... by sliverstorm on Monday November 03, 2014 @05:42PM (#8554043)
I thought 7z supports RAR now?
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Re:Announcing RemoteIE: Test the Latest IE on Windows, Mac O... by iancarroll on Monday November 03, 2014 @05:57PM (#8554122)
Setting up that thing is a pain... Definitely could use some work regarding file associations (maybe I'm just doing it wrong).

Putting it into a ZIP allows native support on pretty much every platform.

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