[Python-Dev] Keyword meanings [was: Accept just PEP-0426]

[PJ Eby]

On Thu, Dec 6, 2012 at 9:58 AM, Vinay Sajip <vinay_sajip at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> Daniel Holth <dholth <at> gmail.com> writes:
>
>> The wheel implementation makes sure all the metadata (the .dist-info directory)
>> is at the end of the .zip archive. It's possible to read the metadata with a
>> single HTTP partial request for the end of the archive without downloading the
>> entire archive.
>
> Sounds good, but can you point to any example code which does this? As I
> understand it, for .zip files you have to read the last part of the file to get a
> pointer to the directory, then read that to find where each file in the archive
> is, then seek to a specific position to read the file contents.

ISTR that this is especially true for zipimport: I think it depends on
a zipfile signature being present at the *end* of the file.

Certainly, the standard for .exe and shell wrappers for zipfiles is to
place them at the beginning of the file, rather than the end.