[Bug 6713]How do I get Xarchiver to make .tar.gz/.tar.bz2

[jaywalker]

Using Mageia2 on x86_64 and LXDE desktop. The Xarchiver program only lists

arj
bz2
gz
lzma
lzh
jar
zip
7z

as available for archives. The program is, I believe, just a front-end for the underlying utilities and tar is, of course, present on the machine.

Does anyone know if the Mageia2 Xarchiver is intended to support tar archives?

Richard

[doktor5000]

.tar is no real archive and has many limitations (f.ex. regarding max. filesize of indidividual files inside the archive) and no real compression by itself, so is there a real reason you want this?

Also from looking at the project page it seems this was last updated in 2008, this is no good sign i'd say.

[jaywalker]

I got the impression that all source archives were either tar.gz or tar.bz2. I realise that this is just a long standing habit, but I saw no reason to invent a new way. Indeed, I would prefer to follow the crowd in matters like this.

What is the new accepted standard way to scrunch up a source tree? Is there one?

[doktor5000]

Well, use whichever compression gives the best results, probably .lzma or .xz (lzma2) but both of those only support single files, so you still have to create a tarball first and then compress that one. .tar.xz has become pretty common nowadays, for that matter.

[jaywalker]

... which neatly brings us back to the original question. If Xarchiver (according to its help file) can support creating compressed tar archives, then how do we do it with the version shipped for Mageia 2? lzma is supported in Xarchiver so that could be used for the compression, but where did tar go?

[EDIT]
After a lot of google-type research, and after rebuilding the rpm and building the latest svn (revision 42) of Xarchiver I am forced to conclude that this is a bug. Logged it with bugzilla: Bug 6713 (https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6713).
Apparently Xarchiver is somewhat prone to this sort of problem. The latest revision doesn't even detect lzma, gz, bz2 and more! And that revision is at least 2 years old!!!
[/EDIT]

[doktor5000]

Also from looking at the project page it seems this was last updated in 2008, this is no good sign i'd say.

This is what i was trying to tell you, they may be problems with more recent libraries or integration stuff.

You may want to try out another alternative, like Ark or file-roller or something like that.

[jaywalker]

I did have a look at file-roller, briefly, but as it is a Gnome component it wanted me to add hundreds of megabytes of additional "dependencies" including a new file manager. Somehow I suspect Ark might try to do something similar. And all of this to manage compression of data? Seems a high price, but I am still looking and I will try any lightweight archive manager.

R

[doktor5000]

You can also do it on the commandline, no need to add any dependencies that way

Code: Select all

tar cjf nameofarchive.tar.bz2 nameoffolder/

for example creates a bzip-compressed tarball of nameoffolder/ called nameofarchive.tar.bz2.

[jaywalker]

Yes indeed, love your command line and your computer will love you. That's what I have had to do while we are investigating the problem in pcmanfm/xarchiver.

My concern over the operation of LXDE's integrated archive program is largely to avoid annoying one aggressively gui-oriented user for whom I provide support on his Linux system. As a Windows User he is much less tolerant of broken gui tools such as is presented by Xarchiver in LXDE.

On the other hand, the system I am supporting would be much less effective as a Windows solution, but it needs every last ounce of performance I can squeeze out of it to run the applications. Fortunately compressing directories into archives is not something he has to do very often.

R

[ozky]

Please don't necrobump old thread as it's 4 years old start new one instead thanks.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.p ... =necrobump