zipfs and write support

[Alan Bateman]

Joel Uckelman wrote:
> :
> I don't know of any way to stop other proceses from corrupting the
> underlying ZIP file. Do you? I thought file locks were advistory on
> many OSes. I'm not familiar with what would need to be done to
> coordinate across VMs. Is there a compelling reason to do this? It's
> an unusual requirement.
>   
Yes, to be portable, it is best to assume the file locking is advisory. 
But, file locking isn't going to help when you are replacing the zip 
file (which I assume is going to happen as it is based on 
java.util.zip). An approach that I think I've suggested before is to use 
a "server" to coordinate access. That would allow applications in 
different VMs to access the "file system" concurrently. It could uses 
the default file system as a temporary location for updates and re-build 
the the zip file file when the file system is closed or the server is 
shutdown. Clearly this is would be a more ambitious project and I'm just 
mentioning it as a potential solution that someone might like to pursue.

-Alan.