There seems to be a need for a Unix or Linux multiple-file compression and archiving utility that permits random access to files. Tar.gz does not permit random access. ZIP does not properly store Unix file permissions and probably deals poorly with special files like symbolic links. (Incidentally only some versions of tar (star, bsdtar, Fedora patched tar, but not Debian GNU tar) correctly store extended attributes.)
Ideally, it would be possible to loopback mount such a compressed archive as a filesystem. Write and modify would be amazing.
https://code.google.com/p/idzip/ (Improved Dictzip) is a promising start. We would like better compression algorithms than gzip.
Files could be reordered, though if there is a dependence between files, random access could be tricky.
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