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After a summer of working on various ways to implement it, I'm happy to
announce that I'm putting the first release of my Ruby Summer of Code
project, ruby_archive 0.1.0, out into the wild.

It's available on rubygems as well as at
http://github.com/byuni/ruby_archive

ruby_archive lets you use files within zip files much like normal files on
your filesystem.  This means you can package data files and Ruby libraries
within convenient zip files and still use them easily from your program.
 For open, load, require, and most File.*** and Dir.*** operations, you can
access files within archives by targetting at a location like the following:
'(filename)!/(file_inside_archive)'

It also allows you to package your entire program in one file and run it
using the included 'rba_launch' program.

See the readme file at the github site or in the rdoc for full instructions
and details.

It works on ruby-1.8.7, jruby, rubinius, and ruby-head, and probably other
interpreters and versions.  Let me know if and when you run into any
problems, I will be continuing work on this project beyond the Ruby Summer
of Code deadline.

A goal of the project was to put this type of functionality up for
consideration to be included in the Ruby interpreter - feedback related to
this is welcome as well.

-Jonathan Nielsen

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