archive

A utility written in Go which adds archiving functionality to your directories. Archiving in this context refers to archiving as found in email clients, etc.

Motivation

Email clients and productivity software (e.g. to-do list or note taking applications) usually offer an 'archive' feature, which users can use to move items which are not relevant anymore to a separate area to reduce cluttering. This way, the user can focus on items which are relevant right now, while still keeping old items for reference. This utility aims to add this functionality to Unix-like systems.

How does it work?

It is essentially a specialised interface to tar. Instead of the user having to worry about remembering and typing long tar commands, handling errors, keeping track of tar files, etc. this script abstracts away all that to make archiving as simple as archiving an email with the click of a button: archive -a file.txt.

Installation

Firstly you will need to install go (more info here)

Then you can use go install to install the archive-go binary into your $GOBIN directory (which defaults to the $HOME/go/bin directory if not set):

go install github.com/ilkutkutlar/archive-go@latest

Once installed, make sure your $GOBIN directory is included in your $PATH.

Next, consider aliasing archive-go to archive in your shell's rc file for convenience:

# For Bash
echo "alias archive='archive-go'" >> ~/.bashrc

# For Zsh
echo "alias archive='archive-go'" >> ~/.zshrc

# etc.

Usage

Each directory has its own archive file (called .archive.tar by default, can be changed with the -n flag) that's created when first file is archived. That's where all archived files are stored. Add file to CWD's archive (without removing the file):

archive -a file.txt

To move file to archive (add to archive, remove it afterwards):

archive -a file.txt -d

To archive a gzipped version of the file (gzip the file, add gzipped version to archive, remove the gzipped file but keep the original unchanged):

archive -a file.txt -z

Pass the -d flag to remove the original, un-gzipped file after adding the gzipped version to archive:

# Gzip the file to file.txt.gz, add file.txt.gz to archive,
# then remove 'file.txt.gz' and remove 'file.txt' as well.
archive -a file.txt -zd

To unarchive a file (but still keep it in the archive):

archive -u file.txt

To unarchive a file and remove it from the archive:

archive -u file.txt -d

To list archive contents:

archive -l

You can use the -n flag with any option to apply it to a custom archive instead of the default ".archive.tar":

archive -a file.txt -n ".custom.tar"

Options

-a, --add FILE          # Add file to archive of current directory
-u, --unarchive FILE    # Unarchive file from archive of current directory
-n, --archive-name      # Use a custom archive name instead of the default .archive.tar (default ".archive.tar")
-d, --delete            # Pass flag to -a, -u or -z to delete file in dir/archive after operation
-z, --gzip              # Used with -a to gzip the file/dir before archiving it. Original file is 
                        # not affected (i.e. not gzipped) but will be deleted if -d is passed.
-l, --list              # List the files in current directory archive
-t, --top-level         # List only top-level files and directories in current directory archive
-v, --version           # Print version and exit
-h, --help              # Print help and exit

Development

• The utility is written in Go.
• The tests are written using Go's built-in testing package. To run the tests:

go test ./test

• gofmt is used for automatically formatting the code to enforce a level of consistency, as well as simplify it. golint is used for linting. To run the formatter followed by the linter, run the lint.sh script in the project root directory:

sh lint.sh