[Bf-committers] Suggestion: Drop zip archives (Windows releases)

[Thomas Dinges]

Hi everybody,
I'd like to drop .zip archives for our windows releases.

At the moment we provide .exe (Installer version) and .zip and .7z 
(Extract & Run version).

Pros:
* .7z archive is much smaller than .zip, saving traffic and also faster 
for people to download.
* .7z format is open and supported by different programs: 7-Zip, WinZip, 
WinRar.

Cons:
* Windows does not support .7z out of the box, needs third party app 
like 7-zip.

I understand that the one con is a problem in theory, but in practise 
most people have a third party app installed, whether it's 7-Zip, WinZip 
etc.
Windows only supports .zip archives, so without a third party app, 
people can not uncompress/compress .rar, 7-zip, .tar etc...
Asking people to install 7-Zip shouldn't be a problem, 7-Zip is free 
software (LGPL) and only 1 megabyte large. http://7-zip.org/

Anyway, I don't think we should keep 3x different types of binaries (*2 
for the architecture) for Windows, as for Mac and Linux we also only 
provide one for each bitness.

Best regards,
Thomas

-- 
Thomas Dinges
Blender Developer, Artist and Musician

www.dingto.org