linux - Maintain file and folder permissions inside archives

Question

I am packaging and distributing a program I made for Windows,Linux and Mac. I plan to put the files and folders in zip archives.

If I set the correct folder and file permissions and then compress into zip and redistribute them, will those permissions be maintained when the user extracts them in Linux or Mac systems ? Or do they have to set the permissions themselves ?

Answer 1

zip does not store file permissions in the archive.

tar archives will preserve file permissions on Linux and OS X. I have no idea what happens on Windows. If you can test things out on Windows and it works, this is probably your best bet. It probably depends on what tool people use to unpack the archives.

Another option would be to create an installer, although there are few non-commercial options for creating cross-platform installers. Wikipedia has a list.