ZIP Metadata Deployment

[stormbind]

Hi all,

I am posting here because I cannot find the answers through Google, and JAR files frequently do what I need. How do you add metadata to JAR files?

The Real Issue: I have a Chrome/Opera extension which is packaged up as a renamed ZIP file (i.e. JAR/OEX/CRX). I want these archived files to expose expose information (i.e. name, url, version, date) without extracting the files.

JAR archives often contain metadata stored in a meta.xml that does exactly what I need. If I simply compress a meta.xml file using a ZIP tool and rename to JAR, the content will be compressed and not used as metadata.

As I understand it, JAR is just a renamed ZIP. How do you embed metadata in a ZIP/JAR file?

Many thanks!

--Glen

 

[stormbind]

I could be wrong, but I don't think my question has anything to do with Java's META-INF/* directory.

Based on the ./jar tutorials I have seen, files in the META-INF directory are typically compressed/decompressed and have nothing to do with exposing information from the archive's metadata/header.

Also, the developers at Open Office expose a whole XML document as metadata in their distribution. I basically want to know how they do that.

--Glen