Creating a self-booting ZIP archive

Linux initramfs currently supports unpacking CPIO, a standardized format, but there's growing discussion about supporting TAR instead. A developer has now created a self-booting ZIP archive solution.

The standard CPIO tool is described as possibly the most cursed archiver under the SUN. In the old DOS/WinDOS world, ZIP was the most widespread archive format, later partially displaced by RAR during the 2000s.

ZIP polyglot trickery

Because of the design of the ZIP format, it lends itself to various polyglot tricks. Way back when, self-extracting ZIP archives were common - EXE/ZIP polyglots that could run and unpack themselves, which was useful if you didn't have an archiver installed.