Unpacking large archives is slow

[maximelianos]

When opening a 5-gb zip archive, the unpacking is very slow. Wouldn't it be more efficient if the archiver only extracted the needed file list?

[ib]

It actually does only list files when opening an archive.

[joezhouchenye]

Just use file-roller instead. Xarchiver cannot even open the archive file on my ARM board.

[curable-online]

Just use file-roller instead. Xarchiver cannot even open the archive file on my ARM board.

File-roller depends on gtk4 hicolor-icon-theme libadwaita libnautilus-extension libportal libportal-gtk4 and many more. At least it's how it's in its latest release!

They then in return install many other dependencies. It's totally undesirable if you are not using Gnome DE. No one wants to install a lot of Gnome related stuff on his system, just work with archives and compressed files.

Xarchiver is basically used by people who are not using Gnome and or the KDE. Another option would be engrampa; which is MATE archive manager. But file roller is definitely not the alternative.

[joezhouchenye]

It's using Xfce, not Gnome. I use the Thunar file manager and thunar-archive-plugin for my ARM board. Maybe Xarchiver and others have better support for regular PC. The latest Xarchiver might work on the board but I don't want to waste my time.

I just used apt to install file-roller and didn't check carefully what dependencies are installed. I don't care if a lot of Gnome-related stuff is installed as long as it works well. Flatpak can install KDE and Gnome stuff on the same PC, but people still use it. I don't think installing other DE's packages is a big problem.

[curable-online]

Foremost, you are not using the latest version of file-roller. With the latest file-roller, you will notice that it's using a very different theme and toolkit that appears odd in Xfce. And it also consumes twice resources compared to Xarchiver due to using the latest gtk and adwaita toolkit.

Also, if you don't care how much bloated or minimal is your software, then Xarchiver isn't for you and your use case.

As I said, Xarchiver is used by people who want to install a GUI archive manager with least size and least dependencies. Also, I guess, if you are using Ubuntu or Debian, then, perhaps, you are not installing latest Xarchiver package.

Flatpak can install KDE and Gnome stuff on the same PC, but people still use it.

As you say, It CAN! It's your choice what do you want to install using flatpak, just like apt. And besides that, everyone better to talk representing him/herself and do not speak for whole undefined people which includes me.

There are complete separate distros made around the concept of minimalism, like Alpine. They are very required for modern embedded devices, Raspberries, older devices, portable devices etc…

[ib]

@maximelianos What exactly is slow, opening the archive (displaying the contents) or extracting files from it?

[reukiodo]

I have a large .tar.xz archive that can't even list the files. It loads until RAM and swap are exhausted, then displays an error. It doesn't even free the RAM back up until Xarchiver is closed.

EDIT for info:

root@pinebook-pro:~# apt show xarchiver
Package: xarchiver
Version: 1:0.5.4.20-2
Priority: optional
Section: x11
Maintainer: Markus Koschany <apo@debian.org>
Installed-Size: 1,704 kB
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.34), libgdk-pixbuf-2.0-0 (>= 2.22.0), libglib2.0-0 (>= 2.41.1), libgtk-3-0 (>= 3.0.0)
Recommends: bzip2, p7zip-full, unzip, xdg-utils, xz-utils
Suggests: arj, binutils, cpio, lbzip2, lhasa, liblz4-tool, lrzip, lzip, lzop, ncompress, pbzip2, pigz, plzip, rar, unar, zip, zstd
Homepage: https://github.com/ib/xarchiver
Tag: implemented-in::c, interface::commandline, interface::graphical,
 interface::x11, role::program, scope::utility, uitoolkit::gtk,
 use::compressing, use::storing, works-with-format::tar,
 works-with-format::zip, works-with::archive, works-with::file,
 x11::application
Download-Size: 464 kB
APT-Manual-Installed: yes
APT-Sources: http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm/main arm64 Packages
Description: GTK+ frontend for most used compression formats

root@pinebook-pro:~# 

[ib]

@reukiodo What kind of archive and what size is it? How much free RAM and swap do you have?

Package: xarchiver
Version: 1:0.5.4.20-2

This actually is pretty much outdated, although I know that it is current debian stable.

[reukiodo]

Correct, this was on the armbian build for PineBookPro. I believe the tar.xz archive was any one of the images downloaded for the PineBookPro. Manjaro, Armbian, DietPi, etc.

[reukiodo]

I can't boot Armbian anymore to re-validate unless I remove Towboot from SPI - another bug; Tow-Boot/Tow-Boot#319

Right now I have Manjaro installed on eMMC as that's the only distro that I've gotten Towboot to boot into.

[reukiodo]

Manjaro seems to have an even older version? 0.5.4.22