Pack / Unpack Utilities

Small, predictable Unix utilities with a stable scripting interface for creating and extracting archives — without memorizing per-format flags.

Implemented in C with libarchive. Format detection and I/O go through libarchive. Success is silent; use -v to list members.

unpack

Automatically unpacks compressed archives by detecting the format.

Usage

unpack [-v] [-p] [-C dir] [-f|-n|-i] [--] <archive>
unpack --version
unpack --help

Flag	Meaning
-v	List members as they are unpacked
-p	Preserve full mode/ACL/flags (default: mtime + umask)
-C DIR	Change to DIR before unpacking
-f	Force overwrite
-n	Never overwrite (skip)
-i	Always prompt (needs a tty)
--version	Show version (not -v)
--	End of options

Local installs may also provide extract as a symlink to unpack (INSTALL_EXTRACT_ALIAS=1). Distro packages omit that alias to avoid clashing with GNU libextractor.

Examples

unpack backup.tar.gz
unpack -C /tmp/out project.zip
unpack -n data.7z
unpack -f logs.tar.xz

Supported formats (via libarchive)

Archives and compressed streams that libarchive can read, including:

Kind	Examples
tar + filter	.tar, .tar.gz / .tgz, .tar.xz, .tar.bz2, .tar.zst, .tar.lz4, .tar.lz, .tar.lzo, .tar.br
single-file	.gz, .xz, .bz2, .zst, .lz4, .lzo, .br
archive	.zip, .7z, and others supported by the linked libarchive

Content is unpacked to the current directory (or -C). Absolute paths and .. components are rejected; libarchive SECURE_* extraction flags are enabled (symlink escape, absolute paths, ..). See Documentation/CLI.md.

pack

Packages files or directories into the specified format.

Usage

pack [-v] [-o output] <format> <source> [source...]
pack --version
pack --help

Member paths inside the archive are always relative (basename of each source; . / .. are resolved first). Symlinks and hardlinks are preserved. Directory trees keep their root prefix. Unsupported types (FIFO/socket/device) fail with an error.

Examples

pack tar.gz project/
pack -o backup.tar.gz tar.gz /var/tmp/project
pack zip src/ extras/
pack tar.xz logs/
pack 7z backups/
pack tar.zst dataset/
pack gz report.txt

Supported formats

Archive formats (files and directories):

Format	Extension	Backend
tar	.tar	libarchive
tar.gz	.tar.gz	libarchive
tar.xz	.tar.xz	libarchive
tar.bz2	.tar.bz2	libarchive
tar.zst	.tar.zst	libarchive
tar.lz4	.tar.lz4	libarchive
tar.lz	.tar.lz	libarchive
tar.lzo	.tar.lzo	libarchive
tar.br	.tar.br	libarchive (if built with brotli)
zip	.zip	libarchive
7z	.7z	libarchive

Single-file compression (exactly one regular file):

Format	Extension	Backend
gz	.gz	libarchive
bz2	.bz2	libarchive
xz	.xz	libarchive
zstd	.zstd	libarchive
lz4	.lz4	libarchive
lzo	.lzo	libarchive
br	.br	libarchive (if built with brotli)

Without -o, the output is basename(first-source).format in the current directory.

Installation

Prefer a prebuilt package so you do not need a compiler.

Debian / Ubuntu (.deb, no compile)

VER=1.6.1
wget "https://github.com/IRodriguez13/pack-unpack/releases/download/v${VER}/pack-unpack_${VER}-1_amd64.deb"
sudo apt install "./pack-unpack_${VER}-1_amd64.deb"
pack --version && unpack --version

Generic Linux (binary tarball, no compile)

VER=1.6.1
wget "https://github.com/IRodriguez13/pack-unpack/releases/download/v${VER}/pack-unpack-${VER}-linux-amd64.tar.gz"
tar -xzf "pack-unpack-${VER}-linux-amd64.tar.gz"
cd "pack-unpack-${VER}-linux-amd64"
./install.sh          # ~/.local/bin
# sudo ./install.sh   # /usr

Runtime: system libarchive (sudo apt install libarchive13 or distro equivalent).

Arch (AUR)

Package	Compile?	Notes
pack-unpack-bin	No	Prebuilt from GitHub Releases (aur/pack-unpack-bin/PKGBUILD)
pack-unpack	Yes	Source build (PKGBUILD at repo root)

# after packages are on AUR:
yay -S pack-unpack-bin
# or from a clone of this repo:
cd aur/pack-unpack-bin && makepkg -si

From source

Build dependency: libarchive (libarchive-dev / libarchive).

sudo apt-get install -y libarchive-dev build-essential
make clean all check
make PREFIX="$HOME/.local" install          # or: sudo make PREFIX=/usr INSTALL_EXTRACT_ALIAS=0 install
# ./install.sh wraps the same PREFIX choices for convenience

Local .deb: dpkg-buildpackage -us -uc -b (needs debhelper-compat).

Packaging notes: Documentation/PACKAGING.md. CLI contract: Documentation/CLI.md. Contributors: CONTRIBUTORS.md.

pack --version
unpack --version
man unpack
man pack

Requirements

Build: gcc or clang, make, pkg-config, libarchive development package.

Runtime: libarchive (e.g. libarchive13 / libarchive13t64 on Debian/Ubuntu). Some filters may need codecs present in the system libarchive build (zstd, lz4, brotli, …).

Notes

• Stable scripting interface: success is silent; errors on stderr; -v for member lists
• Not a replacement for advanced archiving tools (7z GUI, encrypted volumes, etc.)
• Canonical binaries are pack and unpack (extract is an optional local alias; see packaging notes)