I'll check this one.

Status: NEW => ASSIGNED
CC: (none) => jani.valimaa
Assignee: bugsquad => jani.valimaa

Xarchiver is pretty dead upstream, but there's bunch of patches downstream to improve its usability. I've added some of them to Cauldron and will check if there's patches hanging around to fix this one, but don't expect much.

Tested xarchiver a bit and it seems that it's possible to add files to a existing archive, but not create new archive from a scratch.

URL: (none) => https://forums.mageia.org/en/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2961

By looking source code it should support tar based archives, I'm not a coder though.

Found the problem, "tar detection" was broken because we have gtar which is symlinked to tar. Will push the fixed version to core/updates_testing at some point.

Pushed the fixed release [1] to core/updates_testing. Please test it, the test case is in the first post.

P.S. I also synced patches from Cauldron to improve xarchiver usability. Now it should support .xz and .rpm archives too and 7z support is improved. One patch fixes segfaulting.

[1] xarchiver-0.5.2-9.1.mga2

Status: ASSIGNED => NEW
Assignee: jani.valimaa => qa-bugs

Initial response:
On the plus side we now have tar and various other tar.* entries in the archive selection box.

On the other hand, there appears to be a change in the way archive creation is handled by this version. This needs more testing which I will tackle after a few household chores. 

Jani, Xarchiver is also the default archive manager in LXDE. I have not been able to find the source which, according to the LXDE website, is "adapted", but I am quite convinced that the version originally shipped with MGA2 would not have passed even rudimentary testing by the LXDE folk. Perhaps LXDE folk don't expect us to be using gtar?

I have completed an extended set of tests using xarchiver-0.5.2-9.1.mga2. 
In order to check my original impression that something about using the program had changed, I repeated the tests, as far as is possible, with xarchiver-0.5.2-9.mga2.

Result is that I can not now see any significant differences in the manner of using the Xarchiver program, either as a standalone program or when called from the context menu of pcmanfm. However, there are problems - I'll leave them to the end.

(A) xarchiver-0.5.2-9.mga2
1. Create arj archive of directory in the parent directory of the target.
2. Call the archive the same name as the target directory
3. Xarchiver uses the archive name as a directory name and adds that to the location for the now un-named archive.

eg. In file manager (pcmanfm) select ~/bin and right click to compress it.
    Type in "bin" as the archive name and choose arj as the format (the only one that works for directories in MGA2 Xarchiver).
    This should produce ~/bin.arj, but instead causes the file browser to enter the bin directory and clear the name field.

Repeat but choose another directory as the location for the archive and Xarchiver succeeds without error.
Repeat with zip archive type.
succeeds without error

4. Start Xarchiver from main desktop menu and repeat archive creation tests above

As for file manager tests (1-3) it is not possible to create, for example, ~/bin.arj from ~/bin/


(B) xarchiver-0.5.2-9.1mga2
Repeat tests (steps 1-3) as for xarchiver-0.5.2-9.mga2.
In addition, create tar, tar.gz, tar.bz2, tar.lzma, tar.xz archives
All tests succeed for target directories other than the parent of the directory to be archived.
Repeat test at step 4 above. All archive types can be created.


Now for the anomalies - I'll note them here but I recognise they may belong in new bug reports

1. One attempt to archive a very large directory tree (tar.bz2 I think) did not complete in a reasonable time -I killed it after an hour or so. It was 889 MBytes of a mixture of archives and their expanded contents - mostly programs downloaded from t'internet. A smaller 740 MByte directory was successfully compressed to tar.xz in about 30 minutes.

2. I frequently get a failure of Xarchiver which displays a large empty text area with a no-entry sign above it and the text "An error occurred while accessing the archive:" - No apparent pattern to it but I am investigating.

Wally, any feedback to comment #7 ?

CC: (none) => stormi

I'd say push the update. Xarchiver is pretty dead upstream and have flaws, but it's usable most of the time and now even more with patches from Cauldron.

Richard, what arch(s) did you test?

x86_64, but I installed MGA2 on a 586 laptop on Tuesday so I can check it out there too now. It has been busy testing a Gambas update and I am still struggling to get ANYTHING to appear in the desktop Mageia menu, but the file manager works and I can get a shell easily enough.

Would you like me to test xarchiver there tomorrow?

Richard

(In reply to comment #11)
> Would you like me to test xarchiver there tomorrow?
> 
> Richard

Yes, please!

Whiteboard: (none) => MGA2-64-OK

I have tested xarchiver (0.5.2-9.1.mga2) on i586 using a selection of directories containing typical file mixtures (pdf, text, ods, source code, archives).

I was able to create all tar and compressed tar with bz2, gz, xz, lzma

I have tried to create a 7z compressed file from a text file and a pdf but I get the error "An error occurred while accessing the archive" and the target archive is only 32 bytes long. 

I tested 7z compression because it was noted in the changelog for the test version that a Fedora patch for 7-zip had been applied. I do not regard it as part of the validation test for this bug.

I consider this test to have been passed satisfactorily. The defects noted in bug 6713 (this one) have been corrected.

Richard

Thanks!

Feel free to open new bug reports for the other problems you found.

Whiteboard: MGA2-64-OK => MGA2-64-OK MGA2-32-OK

Update validated. Thanks!

No linking required.

--- Advisory ---
xarchiver was patched in order to fix various bugs. For example, it now allows to create tar archives. See https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6713 for reference.

--- Package ---
xarchiver-0.5.2-9.1.mga2

Keywords: (none) => validated_update
CC: (none) => sysadmin-bugs

Update pushed:
https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Support/Advisories/MGAA-2012-0148

Status: NEW => RESOLVED
CC: (none) => tmb
Resolution: (none) => FIXED