We have a need to create SFX files by way of scripts. Once applications are compiled, installers created, post process installer built that chains installers, batch scripts, reg scripts together, we need to package it up into one single executable for easy distribution for techs. Power Archiver allows us to do this by way of the SFX Wizard. However, it will quickly become time consuming, difficult, and impractical for us to manually do this process with the wizard for all of the installation scenarios, especially when a change occurs. It is my understanding this option has been discussed before but was declined to be added to PACL. Can this option be revisited?
Other possibilities…
PowerAcrhiver.exe does support limited command line arguments with an option to make an SFX from a compressed filed. However, it is missing all of the SFX options such as starting executable, destination folder, relative path options…
The SFX Wizard already generates text containing a summary of most of the configuration settings. It would be easy enough for a user to copy the text, save it as a configuration file and pass the file name as an argument into PowerArchiver.exe. This would allow an easy mechanism to get predefined information into Power Archiver without adding a million switches.
It would be nice if the Archive Converter included the choice of converting to .zpaq…
Just saying…
–Chuck :)
Hi!
Like the title says, I would like to have PACL for Linux. I don’t mind if I would have to buy a separate license for a Linux version. I know that the odds for having a Linux version of PACL is very low, but it’s still a wish from my side.
Kind Regards
Micke
When we save settings, some are not saved. I know whenever I update i have to do various tweaks to get PA back in the same order.
What doesn’t get saved? I know the items on and the location of the QAT is not saved. It seems, too, that there are others . . . maybe some shell extensions; even some basic GUI features (whether queue is on; whether PA is pinned; whether preview is on).
Indeed, the latter three are not always on, even when I check the appropriate boxes during installation.
Could you expand the number of settings saved? That would be nice (but maybe unduly complex to execute).
There are several requests I have offered several times. Perhaps there are technical reasons why you cannot do any of these. But let me offer them again. They all concern AC:
I standardly get 2-3 acknowledgments of an AC download. Perhaps some of that is caused because some people have their email forwarded from one server to another . . . so the download notification gets keyed by each server.
could you please note that the time you are using for download time – so that users will know that the time listed is 5-8 hours off that of US users?
could you give users a way (a) to delete all AC filenames, and (b) to show us which files are still active for download? Actually, I would prefer that AC delete file names once their download date has passed.
This would make AC more attractive (unless, for cost reasons, you would prefer not to make it more attractive – which I would regret, but understand).
… this would be a nice feature
I am new to your application and do like what you have done. There have been postings asking if you have any intent to build your application for platforms other than Windows. I have the same question but will offer a possible solution. If you code utilizing HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript it would be runnable on any platform natively. As an example Google packaged applications. Don’t get me wrong as I do not think it a trivial task but at the same time find it might be worthwhile.
Thank for listening.
It would be nice if we could call upon cloud backup options via command line.
I like to use batch files to set up different jobs. PACL will not work with nearly 15.000 files in 512 folders. I’d really like PACL to be enable to use the new zip-format and have the ability to add large number of files to an archive.
Hi!
I’m doing some tests with list files in PACOMP and the documentation about this says the following thing.
@list : specify list of files for compression (use filename instead of list - see example)
I assume this means that I can only use a list file when I create a archive using the -a parameter.
I have tried this:
pacomp -d Test_Remove.zip @Filelist.txt
Archive: D:\Script\Test_Remove.zip
preparing to compress…
*** WARNING: Nothing to add or update…All OK
The error probably appears because I can only use a list file when I create the archive and not when delete files from it.
Now I can remove one file at a time, but if the Archive is about 1 Gb in size, it will take a lot of time updating the archive after removing one file. It would be better if I could have a list of files that I wanted to remove from the archive. That way I could for example remove 10 files at one time and then update the archive instead of remove 1 file at a time and update the archive 10 times in total.
If each update of the Archive takes approximate 5 min, then it would take about 50 min to remove 10 files from an Archive that is 1 Gb in size. If I could remove the 10 files at one time instead, then the whole update would take 5 min instead of 50 min.
My question is this:
Is it possible to remove more than one file at a time from an archive using PACL?
If not, I’ll put it in a Wishlist for future versions of PACL.
Kind Regards
Micke
Version 6 of PACL no longer allows archiving of windows share names. This used to work in version 4 as shown below:
E:\PACL4>type pacl6prob.lst
\DTTST03\Data\pacltest*.*
\DTRAH05\Data\pacltest*.*E:\PACL4>pacomp -a -r -p -k -c2 PACL6prob.zip @pacl6prob.lst
PowerArchiver Command Line (PACL) Version 4.01 [Mar 07 2005]
Copyright© 1999-2005 ConeXware, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Registered Version
This product is licensed to:
Archive Compression Utility – ZIP, CAB, LHA, BH, JAR, TAR, GZIP, BZIP2
Internet: http://www.powerarchiver.com Email: support@conexware.comArchive: E:\PACL4\PACL6prob.zip
preparing to compress…
adding: \DTTST03\Data\pacltest\F1\FILE1.TXT --> Done. [12%]
adding: \DTTST03\Data\pacltest\F1\FILE2.TXT –> Done. [25%]
adding: \DTTST03\Data\pacltest\F2\FILE3.TXT –> Done. [38%]
adding: \DTTST03\Data\pacltest\F2\FILE4.TXT –> Done. [50%]
adding: \DTRAH05\Data\pacltest\F1\FILE1.TXT –> Done. [62%]
adding: \DTRAH05\Data\pacltest\F1\FILE2.TXT –> Done. [75%]
adding: \DTRAH05\Data\pacltest\F2\FILE3.TXT –> Done. [88%]
adding: \DTRAH05\Data\pacltest\F2\FILE4.TXT –> Done. [100%]E:\PACL4>paext -t PACL6prob.zip
PowerArchiver Command Line (PACL) Version 4.01 [Mar 07 2005]
Copyright© 1999-2005 ConeXware, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Registered Version
This product is licensed to:
Archive Extr.—ZIP,CAB,LHA,ARJ,RAR,ARC,ACE,TAR,GZIP,BZIP2,UUE,ZOO,B64,YENC,…
Internet: http://www.powerarchiver.com Email: support@conexware.comArchive –> E:\PACL4\PACL6prob.zip [ZIP]
testing: DTTST03\Data\pacltest\F1\FILE1.TXT –> OK [12%]
testing: DTTST03\Data\pacltest\F1\FILE2.TXT –> OK [25%]
testing: DTTST03\Data\pacltest\F2\FILE3.TXT –> OK [38%]
testing: DTTST03\Data\pacltest\F2\FILE4.TXT –> OK [50%]
testing: DTRAH05\Data\pacltest\F1\FILE1.TXT –> OK [62%]
testing: DTRAH05\Data\pacltest\F1\FILE2.TXT –> OK [75%]
testing: DTRAH05\Data\pacltest\F2\FILE3.TXT –> OK [88%]
testing: DTRAH05\Data\pacltest\F2\FILE4.TXT –> OK [100%]E:\PACL4>
Here’s the thing.
I need to automate the process of locating a file, compress to a .ZIP, then to convert that to a SFX self-extracting file that is configured to extract to a specific folder on the user’s computer.
To ‘partially’ automate this, I have done the following.
1. Create a BATCH file. The command lines are…
To create the ZIP file, I am using the PACL program called PACOMP.
To create the SFX file, I’m calling the POWERARC -tosfx command.
2. After running the BATCH, I have to manually edit the destination folder, assign ‘overwrite’ option, etc.
I would think that it would not be difficult to add additional ‘args’ for powerarc.exe so that these settings can be included on the command line (and thus in my batch file to completely automate this).
This process is something I must do regularly, so having the ability to do this via the command prompt (batch file) would be really, really nice.
Thanks.
Webbiz
:)
There was a time when 4 GB was considered to be more than enough. Since I’m using PACL to back up different folders on my laptop, it is now becoming a limitation that needs to be adressed. I’ll hope the next version of PACL will be similar to WinZip Command Line Support Add-On.
I’m using it at work and it has full support for making archives larger than 4 GB and I think it’s faster than PACL.
Shouldn’t be hard, I seem to recollect a deb file is just a .ar archive with some embedded .tar.gz or some such. Sure would be handy, though, to be able to read and extract files.
Thanks again for a great product.
I saw that there was a limitation to Delphi that will limit 64bit support for the windows app, is there a plan to update PACL to support the 64 bit platform as well?
It would be nice if you could Display / Create and Edit Info-Zip style Unix permissions information.
At least File Properties should show them.
Oops! Wrong forum…
Hello,
I would like to see the RAR compression facility in the future versions. Similar to that of WinRAR.
I would like to see support for adding files in folders and subfolders just by using wildcards, i.e., “.” without having to actually select all the files.
Next release
-
Could you share with us what improvements we can look forward to in the next release of PACL?
Thanks
-
If you have any suggestions, please let us know. There is no set wishlist right now.
thanks,
-
I have a few suggestions that I think would add some great value.
1. Support for archives larger than 2GB. Right now one of the main reasons I haven’t considering switching my command line zip software to PACL is for just this reason. The ability to create massive archives 5GB+ with over 25000+ files would be nice.
2. Return codes. I’d like to see a wider varierty of return codes to discern errors. Returns such as crc errors, disk is full, nothing to zip, no zip file exists, can not create file (during extraction), can not create zip file (useful for permission problems), process aborted by user, etc etc would be helpful in troubleshooting.
3. Improved logging support. I’d like to be able to generate logs that are similar to the output produced when you view a zip archive. I’d like to see the same results for the source contents of what you are going to compress, and the destination of what you just extracted. Very useful for maintaining logs that have a consistent look and feel, and that contain useful information size as byte size, individual file compression ratio, and path. Also if the logs could have options to display to screen and/or file.
Thanks
-
Hi,
We will start working on next mid update to PACL.
Few things to note:
1. PA since 3.5 supports unlimited size ZIP archives
2/3 We will do what we canWe will also add support for PAE files as well in our next release of PACL.
thanks
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According to Manual.txt ( PowerArchiver Command Line (PACL) v3.51 [06/29/2004])
- 1 * ZIP v4.5 format not supported.
- 2 * Large ZIP archives (> 2 GB) are not supported.
Is that wrong?
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Well manual.txt is only a minor documentation concern from my standpoint. Last night I created a zip file with pacomp.exe that was around 14GB, and was unable to open it with PowerArchiver 9. When I attempted to extract it with paext.exe it appeared to process (and very quickly) but it didn’t extract anything (nor did the screen output display any files).
This is where a variety of exit codes would come in handy to see why it didn’t extract. I tested this on a machine with an athlon xp 2700, a serial ata hd, and 1.5 gb of ram. Machine performance certainly shouldn’t have been a problem.
I’ve tested this before attempting to zip large files to create massive archives over 5GB with versions 3.50 and 3.51 and have had almost no success extracting the files. This could be in part to the fact most of these files were compressed already, but the type of files I was testing with were the types of files I am expecting to have to deal with to create large archives (file types such as avi and mp3).
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PACL supports ZIP v2 standard (not v4.5), so this means it supports archives smaller than 4 GB (but also larger than 2 GB).
Extended ZIP format (v4.5) will not be added so soon to PACL - use PowerArchiver for extremely large archive operations.
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PACOMP.EXE is improperly setting the file dates on compressed files inside the zip to the current date/time.
Is there anyway to prevent that?
