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Creating the .sigmf archive format #44

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May 18, 2017
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Creating the .sigmf archive format #44

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eee3f72
Creating the `.sigmf` archive format (#15).
May 3, 2017
4a0e4b4
Incorporating feedback from #44 reviews into archive spec.
May 11, 2017
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15 changes: 15 additions & 0 deletions sigmf-spec.md
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Expand Up @@ -106,6 +106,21 @@ file contains information that describes the dataset.
3. The metadata file MUST have a `.meta` filename extension.
4. The dataset file MUST have a `.data` filename extension.

#### Archive Format

The metadata and dataset files that comprise a SigMF recording may be combined
into a file archive. Multiple SigMF recordings may be stored in a single
archive.
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I think we should discuss the idea of combining multiple recordings separately before putting it in the spec. It is a UI/API complication for anything that wants to read a SigMF recording because you then need more than a file-picker, and people will be tempted to create little languages for representing pathnames-plus-item-in-the-archive, which gets messy.

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Good point - this is perhaps a little more complex than I first anticipated.


1. The archive MUST use the `tar` archive format, as specified by POSIX.1-2001.
2. The archive file's filename extension MUST be `.sigmf`.
3. Metadata and dataset files MUST NOT be in the top-level directory of the
archive.
4. Each SigMF recording (comprised of a metadata file and a dataset file) MUST
be in separate directories.
5. The metadata and dataset files within a directory must have the same
filenames as the directory itself.
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I don't like how point 3 is written negatively; it does not rule out that you could have two levels of directories (which is another complication), or using absolute paths (which would be bad).

I would suggest something to the effect of (I don't know what language POSIX uses to describe tar files):

  1. The archive MUST contain the following files: for each contained recording with some name given here metasyntactically as N, files named N (a directory), N/N.sigmf-meta, and N/N.sigmf-data.

  2. The archive MUST NOT contain any other files unless their pathnames begin with N/N. for some N which has .sigmf-meta and .sigmf-data files as described above.

(The item 4 is to allow for extensions without allowing for arbitrary junk. More minimally, we could say that for now no other files are allowed.)

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I really like your suggestion, @kpreid. Nice work =)


### Dataset Format

The samples in the dataset file must be in a SigMF-supported format. There are
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