tjluoma / mktgz

zsh script and launchd plist to automatically gzip any files placed into a specific directory

mktgz

Summary: zsh script and launchd plist to automatically gzip any files placed into a specific directory

Over on AskDifferent someone was trying to create a Folder Action which would automatically create a tar.gz out of files put into a specific folder.

The first problem with that approach is that it requires AppleScript (I kid! I kid! … Mostly…)

The second (and bigger) problem is that Folder Actions are notoriously unreliable.

While I stand by my suggestion to use Hazel to solve this, it did occur to me that this could be done fairly easily using a shell script and launchd which I have found to be much more reliable than Folder Actions.

Usage

Option A) You can use mktgz.sh in Terminal.app by calling it with a couple of files that you want to put into a .tar.gz, like this:

	mktgz.sh file.doc file2.xml file3.txt

It will take all of those files and put them into a new .tar.gz file (by default it will be created on your Desktop, but you can set that in mktgz.sh)

Option B) Edit com.tjluoma.mktgz.plist and change the directory listed in <string> and </string>:

	<key>QueueDirectories</key>
	<array>
		<string>/Users/luomat/Action/Gzip</string>
	</array>

Then move the file to ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.tjluoma.mktgz.plist and enter this in Terminal:

	launchctl load "$HOME/Library/LaunchAgents/com.tjluoma.mktgz.plist"

Then you can just put files into ~/Action/Gzip/ (or whatever directory you put in the .plist file) and a few seconds later a .tar.gz will be created in ~/Desktop/

NOTE: Due to the way that QueueDirectories works, the files need to be moved after they are processed. So they too will be moved to ~/Desktop/.

You can change the output directory by changing

	DESTINATION_DIR="$HOME/Desktop"

in the mktgz.sh file.