Free rar unpacking code
Saturday, October 8. 2011, 20:03
One of the few pieces of non-free software I always needed on my system is a rar unpacker. Despite that there are very good free alternatives for high-compression archivers like 7-zip or tar.xz, many people seem to like relying on a proprietary format like rar and it's in widespread use.
Years ago, someone came up with a GPLed rar unpacker, but sadly, that was never updated to support the rar version 3 format. Its development is stalled.
For that reason, some time back I suggested to the Free Software Foundation to add a free rar unpacking tool to their list of high priority projects - they did so. Happily I recently read that they've removed it. There's The Unarchiver now, based on an old amiga library. It supports a whole bunch of formats - including rar v3. It's mainly a MacOS application, but it also provides a command line tool that can be compiled in Linux.
It needs objective C, the gnustep-base libraries and it took me some time to get it to compile properly. For the Gentoo-users: I already committed an ebuild, just run "emerge unar".emerge TheUnarchiver
Update: Changed ebuild name to unar, as that's the name upstream uses for the command line version now.
Years ago, someone came up with a GPLed rar unpacker, but sadly, that was never updated to support the rar version 3 format. Its development is stalled.
For that reason, some time back I suggested to the Free Software Foundation to add a free rar unpacking tool to their list of high priority projects - they did so. Happily I recently read that they've removed it. There's The Unarchiver now, based on an old amiga library. It supports a whole bunch of formats - including rar v3. It's mainly a MacOS application, but it also provides a command line tool that can be compiled in Linux.
It needs objective C, the gnustep-base libraries and it took me some time to get it to compile properly. For the Gentoo-users: I already committed an ebuild, just run "emerge unar".emerge TheUnarchiver
Update: Changed ebuild name to unar, as that's the name upstream uses for the command line version now.
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If you need help getting parts of the unarchiver to work, I've been working on its tar unpacker, so I usually have linux (64bit) executables sitting around. Great to hear it is getting adopted into use by people.
I'm not sure how new the newest release is, but if it's a while old, the current version from mercurial should contain vastly improved commandline tools (such as lsar, which now supports long listings that actually have some useful information).
I'm not sure how new the newest release is, but if it's a while old, the current version from mercurial should contain vastly improved commandline tools (such as lsar, which now supports long listings that actually have some useful information).
#1
halcy
on
2011-10-08 22:57
I would actually like to run "emerge theunarchiver" . Hope, Halcy don't mind. It's so difficult to remember case sensitive names..
#2
Anton
on
2011-10-09 11:34
I tend to stick with the upstream name as close as possible, so I've chosen the uppercase names, although I don't like them much either...
It seems that upstream wants the package to be called unar (since it is just command line utilities without GUI). They have asked Debian maintainers to change name from theunarchiver to unar.
#2.1.1
Anonymous
on
2011-11-25 14:44
It shall either directly depend on dev-libs/icu or >=gnustep-base-1.22.0 which enforces ICU useflag, when compiled against gnustep-base-1.20.1 which is at the moment stable it breaks on missing unicode/ucnv.h
and of course thanks for bringing this to the gentoo world :)
and of course thanks for bringing this to the gentoo world :)
#3
mAhdi
on
2011-10-09 17:14
I'm sure some day you'll learn how to differentiate "it's" from "its".
#4
laslalslfaksfj
on
2011-10-09 21:20
At least he's not using an accent (it`s), as many people do. Would be much worse than mixing up it’s and its.
@Hanno: Thanks a lot, I'm going to try it soon.
@Hanno: Thanks a lot, I'm going to try it soon.
#4.1
Ben
on
2011-10-10 09:35
TheUnarchiver works very well. Although it always creates GNUStep folder in my home dir. I guess thats the standard behaviour for GNUStep programs...
Thanks for writing this ebuild!
Thanks for writing this ebuild!
#5
Andrius
on
2011-10-10 18:10
Let's make a stronger case for 7-zip! I promote going to torrent-sites (which I guess is the strongest promoter of tar) and request/promote the use of a better compression algorithm, i.e. 7-zip.
The client is a also a lot better than Rar, and can unpack all different formats, including rar.
The client is a also a lot better than Rar, and can unpack all different formats, including rar.
7z's rar unpacking code is from the original unrar and non-free. 7z itself is GPL, but only if you remove the unrar code. Thus, for example, the Gentoo package ships without rar unpacking capability.
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