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<h1>dtrx: Intelligent archive extraction</h1>

<h2>Introduction</h2>

<p><span class="pname">dtrx</span> stands for &ldquo;Do The Right
Extraction.&rdquo; It's a tool for Unix-like systems that takes all the
hassle out of extracting archives.  Here's an example of how you use
it:</p>

<pre>$ dtrx linux-2.6.10.tar.bz2</pre>

<p>That's basically the same thing as:</p>

<pre>$ tar -jxf linux-2.6.10.tar.bz2</pre>

<p>But there's more to it than that.  You know those really annoying files
that don't put everything in a dedicated directory, and have the
permissions all wrong?</p>

<pre>$ tar -zvxf random-tarball.tar.gz
foo
bar
data/
data/text
$ cd data/
cd: permission denied: data</pre>

<p><span class="pname">dtrx</span> takes care of all those problems for
you, too:</p>

<pre>$ dtrx random-tarball.tar.gz
$ cd random-tarball/data
$ cat text
This all works properly.</pre>

<p><span class="pname">dtrx</span> is simple and powerful.  Just use the
same command for all your archive files, and they'll never frustrate you
again.</p>

<h2>Features</h2>

<ul>

<li><strong>Handles many archive types</strong>: You only need to remember
one simple command to extract

<span class="pname">tar</span>,
<span class="pname">zip</span>,
<span class="pname">cpio</span>,
<span class="pname">deb</span>,
<span class="pname">rpm</span>,
<span class="pname">gem</span>,
<span class="pname">7z</span>,
<span class="pname">cab</span>,
<span class="pname">gz</span>,
<span class="pname">bz2</span>, and
<span class="pname">lzma</span> files.

If they have any extra compression, like <span
class="pname">tar.bz2</span>, <span class="pname">dtrx</span> will take
care of that for you, too.</li>

<li><strong>Keeps everything organized</strong>: <span
class="pname">dtrx</span> will make sure that archives are extracted into
their own dedicated directories.</li>

<li><strong>Sane permissions</strong>: <span class="pname">dtrx</span> makes
sure you can read and write all the files you just extracted, while leaving
the rest of the permissions intact.</li>

<li><strong>Recursive extraction</strong>: <span class="pname">dtrx</span> can
find archives inside the archive and extract those too.</li>

</ul>

<h2>Download</h2>

<p><a href="dtrx-6.0.tar.gz">Download <span class="pname">dtrx</span>
6.0</a>.  The SHA1 checksum for this file
is <tt>dbe0211c90d6d03035f612fe31f96c825aa75274</tt>.  New features in this
release include:</p>

<ul>

<li>When you specify <tt>-v</tt> at the command
   line, <span class="pname">dtrx</span> will display the files it
   extracts, much like <span class="pname">tar</span>.</li>

<li>When <span class="pname">dtrx</span> prompts you about how to handle
   recursive archives, you now have the option of listing what those
   archives before making a decision.</li>

<li><span class="pname">dtrx</span> will now provide more information about
   why a particular extraction attempt failed.  It will show you error
   messages from all the attempts it made, rather than only the last error
   it got.  It will also detect and warn you when one of the underlying
   extraction tools, like <span class="pname">cabextract</span>, cannot be
   found.</li>

<li><span class="pname">dtrx</span> does a better job of cleaning up after
   itself.  It wouldn't always clean up temporary files after certain
   errors; that has been fixed.  It also catches SIGINT and SIGTERM and
   cleans up before finishing execution.</li>

<li>Version 5.0 introduced a regression such
   that <span class="pname">dtrx</span> would not offer to extract
   recursive archives that were hidden under subdirectories.  Version 6.0
   fixes that.</li>

</ul>

<h2>Requirements</h2>

<p>If you have Python 2.4 or greater, this should work out of the box.  If
you're stuck on Python 2.3, you can use this if you install the <a
href="http://www.lysator.liu.se/~astrand/popen5/">subprocess module</a>.
You'll need the usual tools for the archive types you want to extract: for
example, if you're extracting <span class="pname">zip</span> files, you'll
need <span class="pname">zipinfo</span> and <span
class="pname">unzip</span>.</p>

<h2>Installation</h2>

<p>You can just put <span class="pname">scripts/dtrx</span> wherever is
convenient for you, but if you want to install the program system-wide, you
can also run the following command as root or equivalent:</p>

<pre>python setup.py install</pre>

<p>See the included <tt>INSTALL</tt> file for more information.</p>

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