Libarchive Bindings

[shmuelie]

Rationale

Libarchive is now included in Windows 10 since RS4, meaning that many developers can use it without needing another library.

Alternatives

Developers could use various other libraries that add compression/decompression support, but they are not in Windows

[tannergooding]

@shmuelie do we have docs on the official library to reference, etc?

I see archiveint.dll but it's listed as Windows-internal libarchive library and I don't see any docs on docs.microsoft.com or an official header in the Windows SDK.

[shmuelie]

archiveint.dll is just libarchive with no modifications (API wise at least), the header for it should work.

[shmuelie]

@tannergooding any update on this?

[tannergooding]

No progress yet. I've been focusing on getting the new stable bits out and on-boarding the project into the .NET Foundation.

I should have more time for this coming up soon, but not having an official header in the SDK and it being officially labeled as "internal" does make it overall more difficult.

[tannergooding]

I've taken another look at this and it seems like something that really needs to be its own repo and not part of Interop.Windows.

It is not shipped as part of the SDK in any capacity and is independently maintained/shipped. The header files required are also quite vast which entails a significant additional maintenance burden.