SWI-Prolog binding to libarchive
Jan Wielemaker
VU University Amsterdam
The Netherlands
E-mail: J.Wielemaker@vu.nl
Abstract
The library libarchive provides a portable way to access archive files. This package is a Prolog wrapper around this library. The motivation to introduce this library is twofold. In the first place, it provides a minimal platform independent API to access archives. In the second place, it allows accessing archives through Prolog streams, which often elimaniates the need for temporary files and all related consequences for performance, security and platform dependency.

# Table of Contents

## 1 Motivation

Archives play two roles: they combine multiple documents into a single one and they typically provide compression and sometimes encryption or other services. Bundling multiple resources into a single archive may greatly simplify distribution and guarantee that the individual resources are consistent. SWI-Prolog provides archiving using its (rather arcane) saved-state format. See resource/3 and open_resource/3. It also provides compression by means of library(zlib).

External archives may be accessed through the process interface provided by process_create/3, but this has disadvantages. The one that motivated this library was that using external processes provide no decent platform independent access to archives. Most likely zip files comes closest to platform independent access, but there are many different programs for accessing zip files that provide slightly different sets of options and the existence of any of these programs cannot be guaranteed without distributing our own bundled version. Similar arguments hold for Unix tar archives, where just about any Unix-derives system has a tar program but except for very basic commands, the command line options are not compatible and tar is not part of Windows. The only format granted on Windows is .cab, but a program to create them is not part of Windows and the .cab format is rare outside the Windows context.

Discarding availability of archive programs, each archive program comes with its own set of command line options and its own features and limitations. Fortunately, libarchive provides a consistent interface to a wealth of compression and archiving formats. The library `library(archive)` wraps this library, providing access to archives using Prolog streams both for the archive as a whole and the archive entries. E.g., archives may be read from Prolog streams and each member in turn may be processed using Prolog streams without materialising data using temporary files.

## 2 library(archive): Access several archive formats

See also
  http://code.google.com/p/libarchive/

This library uses libarchive to access a variety of archive formats. The following example lists the entries in an archive:

    list_archive(File) :-
          archive_open(File, Archive, []),
          repeat,
             (   archive_next_header(Archive, Path)
             ->  format('~w~n', [Path]),
                 fail
             ;   !,
                 archive_close(Archive)
             ).

[det]archive_open(+Data, -Archive, +Options)
  Open the archive in Data and unify Archive with a handle to the opened archive. Data is either a file or a stream that contains a valid archive. Details are controlled by Options. Typically, the option close_parent(true) is used to close stream if the archive is closed using archive_close/1. For other options, the defaults are typically fine. The option format(raw) must be used to process compressed streams that do not contain explicit entries (e.g., gzip'ed data) unambibuously.
  close_parent(+Boolean)
    If this option is `true` (default `false`), Stream is closed if archive_close/1 is called on Archive.
  compression(+Compression)
    Support the indicated compression. This option may be used multiple times to support multiple compression types. If no compression options are provided, `all` is assumed. Supported values are `all`, `bzip2`, `compress`, `gzip`, `lzma`, `none` and `xz`. The value `all` is default.
  format(+Format)
    Support the indicated format. This option may be used multiple times to support multiple formats. If no format options are provided, `all` is assumed. Supported values are: `all`, `ar`, `cpio`, `empty`, `iso9660`, `mtree`, `raw`, `tar` and `zip`. The value `all` is default.

  Note that the actually supported compression types and formats may vary depending on the version and installation options of the underlying libarchive library. This predicate raises a domain error if the (explicitly) requested format is not supported.

  Errors
    - domain_error(compression, Compression) if the requested compression type is not supported.
    - domain_error(format, Format) if the requested format type is not supported.
[det]archive_close(+Archive)
  Close the archive. If close_parent(true) is specified, the underlying stream is closed too.
[semidet]archive_next_header(+Handle, -Name)
  Forward to the next entry of the archive for which Name unifies with the pathname of the entry. Fails silently if the name of the archive is reached before success. Name is typically specified if a single entry must be accessed and unbound otherwise. The following example opens a Prolog stream to a given archive entry. Note that Stream must be closed using close/1 and the archive must be closed using archive_close/1 after the data has been used. See also setup_call_cleanup/3.

      open_archive_entry(ArchiveFile, Entry, Stream) :-
          open(ArchiveFile, read, In, [type(binary)]),
          archive_open(In, Archive, [close_parent(true)]),
          archive_next_header(Archive, Entry),
          archive_open_entry(Archive, Stream).

[det]archive_open_entry(+Archive, -Stream)
  Open the current entry as a stream. Stream must be closed.
archive_header_property(+Archive, ?Property)
  True when Property is a property of the current header. Defined properties are:
  filetype(-Type)
    Type is one of `file`, `link`, `socket`, `character_device`, `block_device`, `directory` or `fifo`.
  mtime(-Time)
    True when entry was last modified at time.
  size(-Bytes)
    True when entry is Bytes long.
archive_extract(+ArchiveFile, +Dir, +Options)
  Extract files from the given archive into Dir. Supported options:
  remove_prefix(+Prefix)
    Strip Prefix from all entries before extracting
  Errors
    - existence_error(directory, Dir) if Dir does not exist or is not a directory.
    - domain_error(path_prefix(Prefix), Path) if a path in the archive does not start with Prefix
  To be done
    Add options
[det]archive_entries(+Archive, -Paths)
  True when Paths is a list of pathnames appearing in Archive.

## 3 Status

The current version is merely a proof-of-concept. It lacks writing archives and does not support many of the options of the underlying library. The main motivation for starting this library was to achieve portability of the upcomming SWI-Prolog package distribution system. Other functionality will be added on `as needed' basis.

# Index

?
archive_close/1
archive_entries/2
archive_extract/3
archive_header_property/2
archive_next_header/2
archive_open/3
archive_open_entry/2
open_resource/3
  1
process_create/3
  1
resource/3
  1