ouch/README.md

Ouch!

ouch stands for Obvious Unified Compression Helper.

It's a CLI tool for compressing and decompressing for various formats.

• Features
• Usage
• Installation
• Supported Formats
• Benchmarks
• Contributing

Features

1. Easy to use.
2. Fast.
3. Great error message feedback.
4. No runtime dependencies required (for Linux x86_64).
5. Accessibility mode (see more).
6. Shell completions and man pages.

Usage

Ouch has three main subcommands:

• ouch decompress (alias d)
• ouch compress (alias c)
• ouch list (alias l)

Decompressing

Use the decompress subcommand, ouch will detect the extensions automatically.

ouch decompress a.zip

# Decompress multiple files
ouch decompress a.zip b.tar.gz c.tar

The -d/--dir flag can be used to redirect decompression results to another directory.

# Decompress 'summer_vacation.zip' inside of new folder 'pictures'
ouch decompress summer_vacation.zip --dir pictures

Compressing

Pass input files to the compress subcommand, add the output file at the end.

# Compress two files into `archive.zip`
ouch compress one.txt two.txt archive.zip

# Compress file.txt using .lz4 and .zst
ouch compress file.txt file.txt.lz4.zst

ouch detects the extensions of the output file to decide what formats to use.

Listing

ouch list archive.zip

# Example with tree formatting
ouch list source-code.zip --tree

Output:

└── src
   ├── archive
   │  ├── mod.rs
   │  ├── tar.rs
   │  └── zip.rs
   ├── utils
   │  ├── colors.rs
   │  ├── formatting.rs
   │  ├── mod.rs
   │  └── fs.rs
   ├── commands
   │  ├── list.rs
   │  ├── compress.rs
   │  ├── decompress.rs
   │  └── mod.rs
   ├── accessible.rs
   ├── error.rs
   ├── cli.rs
   └── main.rs

Supported formats

Format	.tar	.zip	.gz	.xz, .lzma	.bz, .bz2	.lz4	.sz	.zst
Supported	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓

And the aliases: tgz, tbz, tbz2, tlz4, txz, tlzma, tsz, tzst.

Formats can be chained:

• .tar.gz
• .tar.gz.gz.gz.gz
• .tar.gz.gz.gz.gz.zst.xz.bz.lz4

Installation

On Arch Linux

yay -S ouch

From crates.io

cargo install ouch

Using our script to download the latest binary

Compiled for x86_64 on Linux, Mac OS and Windows, run with curl or wget.

Method	Command
curl	curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ouch-org/ouch/master/install.sh | sh
wget	wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ouch-org/ouch/master/install.sh -O - | sh

The script will copy the latest binary to /usr/local/bin.

Compiling from source code

Check the wiki guide on compiling.

Dependencies

If you installed ouch using the download script, you will need no dependencies (static MUSL binary).

Otherwise, you'll need these libraries installed on your system:

• liblzma
• libbz2
• libz

These are available on all mainstream Linux distributions and on macOS.

Benchmarks

Comparison made decompressing linux.tar.gz and measured with Hyperfine and the values presented are the average (wall clock) elapsed time.

Tool	ouch	tar	bsdtar
Average time	911 ms	1102 ms	829 ms

Note: ouch focuses heavily on usage ergonomics and nice error messages, but we plan on doing some optimization in the future.

Versions used:

• ouch 0.3.1
• tar 1.34
• bsdtar 3.5.2

Contributing

ouch is made out of voluntary work, contributors are very welcome! No contribution is too small and all contributions are valued.

• Open an issue.
• Package it for your favorite distribution or package manager.
• Open a pull request.
• Share it with a friend!