It's been a long time since I've posted something "chewable". My energies were all directed on the soon to be released Xceed Zip for .NET version 3.0. Though the apparent changes on the public interface are quite minor, and one can teach the new classes quite easily, the underlying code wasn't trivial.

In short, for all of you who know what ZipArchive, ZippedFile and ZippedFolder are, say hello to TarArchive, TarredFile, TarredFolder, GZipArchive and GZippedFile.

And when I say "easy to teach", what it really means is "find yourself a zipping example, and replace class name occurances of Zip{something} with Tar{somethong} or GZip{something}".

Sure, there are some gotchas, like the fact that a GZIP archive cannot contain filenames with subfolders, are not well-suited to contain more than one compressed file, and can contain files without filenames. But these are details you'll get used to quite easily.

There are two things that make me really proud in that product. One is under the hood, and the other is a sample. First, the engine: My colleague Jacques and I have come up with what we call the "Storage Engine". It's an abstraction of what an archiving library needs in term of temp storage, in-place archive updating, and transactional operations on an archive. Both the new TAR and GZIP implementations use it. In short, it abstracts the fact that we want to always update an archive in-place when possible, but revert to temp files and make sure to commit those temp files with any existing archive upon the last modification of it. If things go well, the ZIP implementation will benefit from it sooner than later.

Second, the sample: The FTP Sample Explorer is gone, replaced with the FileSystem Snippet Explorer, a sample that let's you see, modify and run code snippets that show you the various tasks one might wish to implement. It goes straight to the point. No bells and whistle, no gravy, just the meat. The code is embedded in the executable as compressed serialized XML data. The main information (each topic's description and code) is nothing else than rich text. The nice thing about this sample is that in order for me to modify and add new topics, I simply need to compile the project with an extra define, and I'm now running the application in "admin" mode, enabling me to update the compressed XML file directly, for the next compilation to benefit from this update.

Though I've finished work on this 3.0 version, I already have both hands in the two next releases of Xceed Zip for .NET and Xceed FTP for .NET. The first one will add support for AES encryption, and the second one will now offer proxy support.

I didn't have much time to write because all those releases have a tight schedule I can't bust. I'm leaving Xceed in two months. Yup, I've decided it was time for me to move on. Until then, I have agreed to complete AES implementation, help Jacques kick-start proxy support and train about everybody here, each earning one of the numerous hats I'm wearing. It was a very difficult decision, since I have only friends at Xceed. Though the nine years or so I've spent here were exciting and challenging, I feel it's time for me to try new stuff... by myself. This isn't a divorce. I won't be far from Xceed, and still available to help them from time to time. As for you, dear customers and readers, rest assured you will stay in good hands. The team behind Xceed Zip and Xceed FTP, both .NET and ActiveX, will remain strong, even get stronger than it is now.