BAZ is a very basic archiver with TAR-like command line interface and Electron's ASAR-inspired header format. It supports both ASAR format (directory is stored in ASCII JSON), and a related BSAR format (directory is stored in binary JSON). Both formats describe the same data, but BSON is a bit more compact and can be easily traversed in memory, e.g. if just one file needs to be extracted.
BAZ is very easy to install; it only needs a C compiler and has no dependency on platform-specific building tools. There is no distributives or packages: just compile the source file with your favorite C compiler, link it with the standard C runtime libraries and be done with it. For some platforms, precompiled binaries are available (please see releases).
Here's how you can compile BAZ on a unix box using GCC:
gcc -o baz [baz].c
Instructions for other compilers are similar (you may use Clang on Linux/Mac or CL on Windows).
Please note that CL may issue warnings; we recommend to add -D_CRT_SECURE_NO_WARNINGS for Windows
headers (unless you want to hear that fopen is no longer a reasonable way to open files).
The resulting executable has no dependencies (except C runtime) and can be run from any location. If compiled statically, it can be easily moved between systems with the same ABI.
Unlike its predecessor BAR, BAZ supports file-by-file compression. The supported compressed format is
raw DEFLATE stream. It has its own simple DEFLATE compressor; to use ZLib, one may compile it with
-D USEZLIB compile-time option. Zlib-based compression can produce smaller archives; to make them
even smaller, BAZ supports external compression with the help of Google Zopfli*. If Zopfli is installed,
BAZ can be given --zopfli= run-time option with the number of Zofli iterations as argument. Please
note that bigger number means slower compression; Zopfli's default is 15.
* [zopfli]: https://github.com/google/zopfli
In addition to ASAR/BSAR formats, BAZ supports creation of in-memory archives in a form of C code. These archives can only be created by BAZ; in order to use them in an executable, an extractor needs to be written. An example of such extractor can be seen in the WCPL's sources l.c; the code in it supports both compressed and uncompressed files.
This form of archives can be created with the help of -d or --format=cdump options. In absence
of any format options, this form of an archive is used if the output file has .c or .h suffix.
Only creation mode is supported; when creating such an archive, a special care is taken if the output
file already exists: instead of overriding the entire file, BAZ just replaces the archive data
section of the code if it exiss, or adds such a section to the end of the file if it doesn't.
BAZ adheres to TAR's command line conventions:
baz: BAZ (Basic Archiver with Zlib-like compression) 1.00 built on May 9 2023
usage: baz [OPTION]... [FILE/DIR]...
Examples:
baz -cf arch.bsar foo bar # Create bsar archive from files foo and bar
baz -cf arch.asar foo bar # Create asar archive from files foo and bar
baz -ocfz arch.baz dir # Create bsar archive by compressing files in dir
baz -dcfz arch.c dir # Create C dump archive by compressing files in dir
baz -tvf arch.bsar # List all files in arch.bsar verbosely
baz -xf arch.bsar foo bar # Extract files foo and bar from arch.bsar
baz -xf arch.bsar # Extract all files from arch.bsar
Main operation mode:
-c, --create Create a new archive
-t, --list List the contents of an archive
-x, --extract Extract files from an archive
Operation modifiers:
-f, --file=FILE Use archive FILE (required in all modes)
-k, --keep-old-files Don't overwrite existing files when extracting
-C, --directory=DIR Use directory DIR for extracted files
-O, --to-stdout Extract files to standard output
-X, --exclude-from=FILE Exclude files via globbing patterns in FILE
-z, --compress=DEFLATE Compress files while creating the archive
--exclude="PATTERN" Exclude files, given as a globbing PATTERN
--unpack="PATTERN" Exclude files, but keep their info in archive
--include-from=FILE List/extract files via globbing patterns in FILE
--include="PATTERN" List/extract files, given as a globbing PATTERN
--integrity=SHA256 Calculate or check file integrity info
--zopfli=I Compress via external binary: zopfli --iI
Archive format selection:
-b, --format=bsar Create bsar archive independently of extension
-o, --format=asar Create asar archive even if extension is not .asar
-d, --format=cdump Create C dump even if extension is not .h or .c
File name matching options:
--anchored Patterns match path
--no-anchored Patterns match file/directory name
--wildcards Patterns are wildcards
--no-wildcards Patterns match verbatim
Informative output:
-v, --verbose Increase output verbosity
-q, --quiet Suppress logging
-h, --help Print this help, then exit
Note: when creating archives (-c), only the name of each argument file/dir
is stored in the archive, not a complete path to the argument file/dir.
Compressed .asar archives may be incompatible with other tools.
Please see BAR repository for a smaller archiver with no support for compression.