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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.” 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">rar</span>,

<span class="pname">gz</span>,

<span class="pname">bz2</span>,

<span class="pname">lzma</span>,

<span class="pname">xz</span>, and many kinds of

<span class="pname">exe</span> files, including Microsoft Cabinet archives,

InstallShield archives, and self-extracting <span class="pname">zip</span>

files.

If they have any extra compression, like <span class="pname">tar.bz2</span>

files, <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-6.6.tar.gz">Download <span class="pname">dtrx</span>

6.6</a>.  The SHA1 checksum for this file

is <tt>18b689739596007a2bb43a4ab94d341b68a05c9c</tt>.  Improvements in this

release include:</p>

<ul>

<li>Support for xz compression.</li>

</ul>

<p>If you would like to try the latest development version—or maybe do some

work on it yourself—you can check out the

project's <a href="http://www.selenic.com/mercurial/wiki/">Mercurial</a>

repository.  A

<a href="http://www.brettcsmith.org/2007/dtrx/dtrx/">web repository</a> is

available, or you can just run:</p>

<pre>$ hg clone http://www.brettcsmith.org/2007/dtrx/dtrx</pre>

<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>.  See the INSTALL file included

with <span class="pname">dtrx</span> for a complete list of necessary

utilities.</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 --prefix=/usr/local</pre>

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

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