A WarpIN archive is a compressed file which WarpIN will open to install an application. Unless it is a self-installing executable, a WarpIN archive will have the .WPI file extension.

A WarpIN archive is somewhat similar to other archive formats (such as .ZIP files). It uses the bzlib compression engine internally which is also used by the bzip2 compressors, but it is not binary compatible with any of the existing archive formats because we had to add additional features which are needed for system configuration and package maintenance.

Each archive contains:

  1. One or more packages.

  2. An installation script.
When WarpIN is initially installed on a user's system, it associates itself with WarpIN archives (.WPI files). You can therefore simply double-click on an archive to have WarpIN install it.

WarpIN must be installed separately from the archives. It resides in a separate directory on the hard disk to be able to keep track of the packages which were installed already and to be able to find out whether neccessary preconditions are met for a package which is about to be installed, e.g. if a new package requires another package to be present. Because of this, WarpIN can also remove (de-install) installed packages and do version checks for packages.