6 replies to this topic

[KaiserJohan]

Hello,
I'm looking into making a resource manager or the likes and I was looking for a library to provide a virtual filesystem. Naturally Boost is the first place I look and I found the 'filesystem' library.

I am simply interested in hearing of what other users have experienced with this library and/or know of other similiar libraries to look into, maybe even a fully-fledged resource-manager library.

Thanks

EDIT: C++

Edited by KaiserJohan, 13 December 2012 - 08:25 AM.

[SiCrane]

That depends on what you want from a virtual filesystem. If, for example, you want the ability to treat the contents of a zip file like a regular directory, then boost::filesystem won't be much help, but you might consider PhysFS instead. On the other hand, if the only thing you want is to separate out platform specific directory browsing functions then boost::filesystem works just fine.

[KaiserJohan]

That, but I also want to read/write to resource file formats like PAK

[SiCrane]

PhysFS also has the ability to use the Quake PAK format.

[KaiserJohan]

The PAK format was used since the days of Quake, is there any benefits to roll your own or using another resource format?

[SiCrane]

Unless you have extremely unusual requirements, there isn't much reason to roll your own package format right now. There are a sufficient number floating around that it wouldn't be too hard to find a format that suits your needs that would already have reader and writer code already programmed, debugged and available. I generally just use renamed zip files since tools and code that work with them are ubiquitous.

[Sik_the_hedgehog]

The PAK format was used since the days of Quake, is there any benefits to roll your own or using another resource format?

PAK has some strict limitations on filenames I believe, since it was made for back when you could get away with short filenames (I think the limit was 56 characters per file). Also they have a dated limit on filesize (if I recall correctly PAK files can't be larger than 4GB total), and don't support compression.

But yeah, there isn't much point on making your own format when you could just use ZIP or 7Z and maybe change the extension.

Edited by Sik_the_hedgehog, 13 December 2012 - 10:23 AM.