Archive layout and executable renaming in Lua backend plugins

[jkroepke]

I am building a Lua backend plugin for tools stored in a private Nexus raw repository. It's a mimic of the http plugin, which extends version search, because the http plugin does not support pagination of the nexus api.

Archives commonly contain a versioned root directory:

  node-v24.18.1-linux-x64/
  ├── bin/
  ├── include/
  ├── lib/
  └── share/

The built-in HTTP backend can flatten this layout using strip_components and rename executables using rename_exe, including glob mappings such as:

rename_exe = { "mytool-*" = "mytool" }

Lua plugins can extract archives, but the available file module cannot enumerate files, match globs, or recursively move extracted content. Reproducing these behaviors therefore requires external commands such as tar, find, and mv, reducing portability.

It would be useful for Lua backend plugins to support these use cases without external command dependencies.

[jdx]

Thanks for the detailed report. This is a real gap between the static HTTP backend and Lua backend plugins.

I opened PR #11652 to add:

• optional strip_components = 1 support to archiver.decompress
• sorted file.list() and file.glob() operations
• file.move() for files and complete directory trees

That should cover both versioned archive roots and glob-based executable renaming without relying on tar, find, or mv commands.

AI-assisted — Tool: Codex; model: openai/gpt-5; version: unavailable.

[jkroepke]

Hi @jdx, I implemented the new functions and it works like a charm. Now I came to the point, where I have to use template variables similar how it works on the HTTP backend.

https://mise.jdx.dev/dev-tools/backends/http.html#template-variables

This is necessary, because the naming on a raw hosted storage is not predictable.

Would it be possible to implement a lua function that invoke the mise templating engine?