Bug 350054

Summary:	[RAR] Fallback to libarchive implementation if no cli tools are installed
Product:	[Applications] ark	Reporter:	Pauline Emily <vilene>
Component:	general	Assignee:	Raphael Kubo da Costa <rakuco>
Status:	REOPENED ---
Severity:	wishlist	CC:	eidurkr, elvis.angelaccio, gardenofglass54, hanno, heri+kde, rthomsen6
Priority:	NOR
Version:	unspecified
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	unspecified
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Pauline Emily 2015-07-09 14:55:24 UTC

Ark currently requires the unfree `unrar` program to extract RAR archives, while there are nowadays free alternatives like libarchive, used eg. with the `bsdtar` command line tool. I suggest to change it, so we don't need to use unfree software or the command line.

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1 Elvis Angelaccio 2015-07-10 21:03:21 UTC

Libarchive does not have feature parity with unrar. See here for more details: https://github.com/libarchive/libarchive/wiki/ManPageLibarchiveFormats5#RAR

Comment 2 Ragnar Thomsen 2015-07-29 11:24:26 UTC

Resolving as wontfix. Libarchive's support for rar is not nearly good enough.

Comment 3 hanno 2019-12-12 10:11:56 UTC

Is this still current?
The link no longer works, what features are missing in libarchive?

And wouldn't it make sense to at least support libarchive as a fallback if one doesn't have any of the commandline tools installed?

Comment 4 Elvis Angelaccio 2019-12-15 12:49:25 UTC

Maybe, needs investigation. Re-opening with a new title.

Note that in the meantime, ark supports unar which is free software.

Comment 5 Eidur Eidsson 2023-08-12 23:48:18 UTC

Maybe allow 7-zip as a fallback, or is that no better than libarchive?