MinGW compiled physfs library to provide abstract access to various archives
Description
MinGW compiled PhysicsFS, a library to provide abstract access
to various archives. It is intended for use in video games, and the
design was somewhat inspired by Quake 3's file subsystem.
The programmer defines a "write directory" on the physical filesystem.
No file writing done through the PhysicsFS API can leave that
write directory, for security.
For example, an embedded scripting language cannot write outside of
this path if it uses PhysFS for all of its I/O, which means that
untrusted scripts can run more safely. Symbolic links can be disabled
as well, for added safety. For file reading, the programmer lists
directories and archives that form a "search path".
Once the search path is defined, it becomes a single,
transparent hierarchical filesystem.
This makes for easy access to ZIP files in the same way as you access
a file directly on the disk, and it makes it easy to ship a new archive
that will override a previous archive on a per-file basis.
Finally, PhysicsFS gives you platform-abstracted means to determine
if CD-ROMs are available, the user's home directory, where in the
real filesystem your program is running, etc.