ranger-archives

A cross-platform plugin for ranger file manager that provides seamless archive compression and extraction. The plugin automatically detects and uses available archiver programs such as tar, zip, 7z, and prioritizes parallelized versions like pbzip2, pigz, pixz for better performance.

Key Features

• Cross-platform compatibility with intelligent tool detection and validation
• Extensive format support: 20+ formats including tar.gz, tar.bz2, tar.xz, tar.lz4, tar.zst, zip, 7z, rar, lzh, zpaq
• Smart tool selection: Prioritizes parallel compression tools (pigz, pbzip2, pixz) for better performance
• Automatic fallback: Uses alternative tools when preferred ones are unavailable
• Safe operations: Validates tool compatibility and handles encoding issues gracefully
• Multiple extraction modes: Extract to current directory, custom directory, or individual subdirectories
• Custom flag support: Pass specific flags to underlying compression/decompression tools
• Auto-completion: Tab completion for common archive formats in ranger
• Standalone CLI: Command-line interface for testing and automation outside ranger
• Comprehensive testing: Real-world test suite with file integrity verification

Donate

If you find this plugin useful, please consider donating any amount of money. This will help me spend more time on supporting open-source software.

Installation

Clone this repo into ranger plugins folder. In Linux, it is typically located here: ~/.config/ranger/plugins.

cd ~/.config/ranger/plugins
git clone https://github.com/maximtrp/ranger-archives.git

Usage

Ranger Commands

• :extract [DIRECTORY] - Extract archives to current or specified directory
• :extract_raw [FLAGS] - Extract archives using custom flags (e.g., -U for Unicode handling)
• :extract_to_dirs [FLAGS] - Extract each archive to its own subdirectory based on filename
• :compress [FLAGS] [FILENAME.EXT] - Compress selected files/directories to archive with auto-naming

The compress command supports tab completion for common formats (.zip, .tar.gz, .tar.bz2, .tar.xz, .7z) and automatically names archives after the current directory if no filename is provided.

Command Line Interface

The plugin includes a standalone CLI tool for testing and automation:

# Compress files
python3 archive_cli.py compress test.zip file1.txt file2.txt
python3 archive_cli.py compress test.tar.gz folder/ --flags="-v"

# Extract archives
python3 archive_cli.py decompress test.zip
python3 archive_cli.py decompress test.tar.gz --output=extract/

Examples

Extraction

Basic

Select an archive and type:

:extract some_dir

Or even just:

:extract

Using flags

This is an example of extracting a zip archive to a directory dirname and escaping all non-ASCII Unicode chars:

:extract_raw -U -d dirname

Compression

Basic

Select a file or a folder (or multiple files and folder) in ranger and enter:

:compress files.zip

or (use quotation marks with filenames containing spaces)

:compress "my important files.zip"

Using flags

zip archiver provides a flag for better compression ratio -9 (just like gzip and many others). We can just add it before an archive filename:

:compress -9 file.zip

The other flags can be used likewise.

Shortcuts

Add these lines to ~/.config/ranger/rc.conf for keyboard shortcuts:

map ex extract
map ec compress

Testing

Run the comprehensive test suite to verify format support:

python3 tests/test_real_world.py

This creates test data with various file types and validates compression/decompression for all available formats on your system. The test suite:

• Creates diverse test files (text, binary, Unicode, nested directories)
• Tests compression and decompression cycles
• Verifies file integrity using SHA256 checksums
• Measures performance and compression ratios
• Generates detailed reports with format compatibility

Supported Formats

The plugin automatically detects and supports these formats based on available tools:

Archive Formats

• ZIP: .zip (via zip/unzip or 7z)
• 7-Zip: .7z (via 7z/7za)
• RAR: .rar (via rar/unrar or 7z)
• TAR: .tar (via tar or 7z)
• ZPAQ: .zpaq (via zpaq)

Compressed Archives (tar-based)

• Gzip: .tar.gz, .tgz (via tar + gzip/pigz)
• Bzip2: .tar.bz2, .tbz2 (via tar + bzip2/pbzip2/lbzip2)
• XZ: .tar.xz, .txz (via tar + xz/pixz)
• LZMA: .tar.lzma (via tar + xz/pixz)
• LZ4: .tar.lz4 (via tar + lz4)
• LRZIP: .tar.lrz (via tar + lrzip)
• LZIP: .tar.lz (via tar + lzip/plzip)
• LZOP: .tar.lzop, .tzo (via tar + lzop)
• Zstandard: .tar.zst (via tar + zstd)

Smart Single-file Compression

• .gz: via gzip/pigz (single file → .gz, multiple files → .tar.gz)
• .bz2: via bzip2/pbzip2/lbzip2 (single file → .bz2, multiple files → .tar.bz2)
• .xz: via xz/pixz (single file → .xz, multiple files → .tar.xz)
• .lzma: via xz/pixz (single file → .lzma, multiple files → .tar.lzma)
• .lz: via lzip/plzip (single file → .lz, multiple files → .tar.lz)
• .lzop: via lzop (single file → .lzop, multiple files → .tar.lzop)

Extraction-only Formats

• DEB: .deb (via ar - extraction only)