@baljemmett @0xabad1dea Oh, that's easy. The zip file is standard and everybody uses it, so that's what gets sent out. But if you put Unix stuff in a zip the permissions get messed up, so you tar it first.
@RogerBW @0xabad1dea Yes, that's about what I came up with too. The odd thing is that going back through the history earlier attempts were .tar.gz and later .tar.Z, presumably because some of the target platforms didn't ship with gunzip but decompress was everywhere, but then those same platforms wouldn't have shipped with unzip either! I suppose you could unzip on another machine and then move the tar file over easily enough...
(Mainly I just wish some of these decisions had been documented!)
@baljemmett @RogerBW there’s a very real chance that either a web server or a client side plugin got upset about fake mystery extensions you just made up, but believes zip is real