7-ade readme

Summary

7-ade is an archive expander for Microsoft Windows built around 7-Zip. 7-ade provides double-click expansion of archives in the manner of the venerable StuffIt Expander for Macintosh:

The contents of the archive are expanded upon double-click into the folder containing the archive
If the archive contains two or more items at its root, an enclosing folder is created using the name of the archive
Tarballs are extracted in full: the compressed archive is expanded into your temporary directory first, and the resulting tar archive is expanded back to the directory containing the tarball (overcoming a tedious extra step required by 7-Zip)

7-ade examines the archive in question, decides on an appropriate course of action for expansion, and makes a request of the 7-Zip graphical expansion utility (7zG.exe) to expand the archive.

The following additional features are provided:

Simple rule definitions to apply different expansion behaviours dependent on filename and pathname
Replacement file type icons for the most common archive types when file types are associated with 7-ade

Tarball file extensions recognised at the time of writing are: .tar.gz and .tgz (gzip); .tar.bzip2, .tar.bz2 and .tbz2 (bzip2); tar.bz and .tbz (bzip); and .txz and .tar.xz (xz). This is based on 7-Zip’s list of potential file associations. RPM (.rpm) files are also fully unpacked, unless the inner file is compressed with Zstandard, which 7-Zip does not recognise.

7-Zip needs to be installed on the computer for 7-ade to function. If 7-Zip is already installed before installing 7-ade, then “View in 7-Zip” is added to the context menu of each archive type for convenience.

Getting started

This part is simple. Once the program is installed, simply double-click archives. Windows 8 and 10 will prompt you to switch over to 7-ade on a per-file-type basis. Windows 7 users need to associate the file types manually; it should be possible using the Set your default programs control panel, but Windows 10, 7-ade does not always appear.

The program should work in Windows XP, but no provisions are made for XP’s file types system. Please let Windows XP rest in peace.

Configuration

Most users will simply use the program as-is: double-click archives to expand them. Chances are you can simply stop reading here. However, I have a particular use case (backup reports delivered as HTML files in zip files) where I wanted files of a particular name—found in a particular location (Outlook’s temporary directory)—to be expanded into a specific directory with overwrite enabled. As such, I chose to make this facility generic in case someone else finds it useful. Additional rule options have been added per user requests.

7-ade is configured using %APPDATA%\Telcontar\7-ade.ini. This file is used if it exists, and is not required. The section and parameter names are not case sensitive. If non-ASCII text is to be used in the file, then it must be in UTF-16 format (not UTF-8) due to how Windows reads INI files.

Example contents are as follows:

[Rules\foo]
Name begins=foo
Path is=C:\Users\McFoo\Downloads
Overwrite=yes

[Rules\bar]
Name begins=megacorp-batch-
Target path=\\BAZ\megacorp\batches\
Recycle archive=yes

Field types

string: text; for non-ASCII values, the whole file must be UTF-16 format
boolean: “1”, “true” and “yes” are considered true, regardless of case; all other values are considered false
enum: the value must be one of the choices specified (case-insensitive)

[7-ade] section

The [7-ade] section defines global settings for the program.

Rules: string: comma separated list of INI section names that contain rule definitions, listed in order of rule priority (replaced with the version 1.1 method)
Debug: boolean: enable debug output that can be viewed in DebugView or equivalent

Rule definitions

Rules allow the behaviour of 7-ade and 7-Zip to be made conditional upon the name and path of archives. One or more rules can be defined; 7-ade examines the applicability of rules to an archive in the order that the rules are defined (version 1.1 method) or the order that they are listed in the Rules parameter of the [7-ade] section (version 1.0 method). The first rule to match is applied, and the remainder of the rules are ignored even if they would have matched. If no rules match, and a [Defaults] section exists, then any actions in this section are applied.

From version 1.1, rules can be defined as INI sections whose names begin “Rules\”, as shown in the example above. The older version 1.0 format is described later, for reference.

From version 1.2 onwards, rules may inherit their configuration from the defaults.

General

Inherit: boolean: inherit all the configuration from the [Defaults] section (new in 1.2); the Inherited setting of [Defaults] is applied if Inherit is not set, but if Inherit is set on a rule, this takes precedence
Inherited: boolean: applicable only to the [Defaults] ruleset, this setting indicates whether the default behaviour should be inherited by rules (unless overridden by individual rules); inheritance is disabled by default to retain compatibility with earlier versions (new in 1.2)

Filter parameters

Name is: string: The filename of the archive (including extension) equals this text
Name begins: string: The filename of the archive (including extension) begins with this text
Name ends: string: The filename of the archive (including extension) ends with this text
Name contains: string: The filename of the archive (including extension) contains this text
Path is: string: The path of the folder containing the archive equals this text
Path begins: string: The path of the folder containing the archive begins with this text
Path contains: string: The path of the folder containing the archive contains this text

Actions

Overwrite

boolean: instruct 7-Zip to overwrite automatically; also, if the enclosing folder for expansion exists, it will be re-used

Target path

string: target location to expand the archive; if an enclosing folder is needed, it will be placed inside this location

Recycle archive

boolean: if archive expansion is successful, move the source archive file into the Recycle Bin (if the archive is too large to be recycled, or is on a volume without Recycle Bin support, this will revert to deletion, but Windows should prompt to confirm deletion)

Delete archive

string: if archive expansion is successful, delete the source archive file (if recycle and delete are both set, recycle takes precedence)

Launch output

enum: launch the top-level contents of the archive following expansion

any: If the output from the archive is a single file, open it; if the output was enclosed in a folder, then open the folder
all: The same as “any”
files: If the output from the archive is a single file, open it; otherwise, take no action

Show

enum: show the extracted archive contents in Explorer following expansion

enclosing: Open the folder containing the extracted output; where the archive’s contents were enclosed in a folder, the parent of that folder is opened
output: If the output from the archive is a single file, show the enclosing folder window in Explorer and highlight the output; the archive’s contents were enclosed in a folder, that folder itself is opened

Update modified time

boolean: following archive expansion, update the modification time of the outermost item instead of preserving the date stored within the archive; for single-file archives the outermost item will be the archive’s only item, while otherwise the outermost item will be the enclosing folder

[Defaults] section

The [Defaults] section is used to define the behaviour of the program if no rules match and to set global defaults that apply regardless of rule. Only the action parameters from rule definitions are meaningful here. By default, all values in this section are ignored when a rule is applied. From version 1.2, the [Defaults] section can be set to be inherited by other rules. Inheritance is disabled by default to ensure that version 1.2 does not introduce unwanted changes in behaviour. Inheritance from the [Defaults] section can also be enabled or disabled on a rule-by-rule basis. A rule with inheritance disabled and no actions functions as an exclusion from the defaults.

Version 1.0 rules method

The original rules method works as follows:

[7-ade]
Rules=foo,bar

[foo]
Name begins=foo
Path is=C:\Users\McFoo\Downloads
Overwrite=yes

[bar]
Name begins=megacorp-batch-
Target path=\\BAZ\megacorp\batches\
Recycle archive=yes

Specifically, the rules are normal INI sections, and the active rules must be specified under the [7-ade] section. This method remains available.

Changelog

1.2

2021-07-11

A new rule action “update modified time” instructions 7-ade to update the modified date of the outermost item [Tara Dawkins]
Rules may now inherit options from the [Defaults] section

1.1.1

2020-08-26

This version just corrects and expands on the file associations.

The .bz2 and .bzip2 file types incorrectly referenced a nonexistent icon; a BZ2 icon is now provided
Dedicated icons are now provided for .tbz and .tbz2 (instead of the generic archive icon)
File types are now provided for .deb, .bz, .xz and .txz along with dedicated icons
File types are now provided for .lzh, .lha and .arj; these types use the generic archive icon

1.1

2020-08-11

Added rule actions “show” and “launch output” to show or launch the output of the archive [Santo Nucifora]
Added rule actions “delete archive” and “recycle archive” to delete or recycle the archive file following successful expansion [José junior]
Simpler rule configuration method
Full unpacking of RPM files in the same manner as with tarballs, albeit tentatively (.cpio internal files within RPM files are understood by 7-Zip, but .cpio.zstd is not)
The existence of the input archive is checked first, to allow for a more readable error message should it not exist
Where an archive name contains one or more extraneous dots before the filename extension (e.g. “photos..zip”) and an enclosing folder is needed, all the dots are stripped from the enclosing folder name, as Windows chokes on folder names ending “.” (even though it is more than willing to create them); if after the dots are removed there is no name left, the enclosing folder is simply named “output”
Where archives contained entirely root-relative paths (e.g. “/etc/foo.cfg”), 7-ade would create an enclosing folder called “ (2)”; now the correct enclosing folder name is used
Tar files created with “.” as the top directory would unpack into a directory called “. (2)”; now the correct enclosing folder name is used
Temporary directories are now cleaned up

1.0

Initial version, 2016-07-31.

Development

7-ade is an open source application programmed in AutoHotkey. It requires the revised ahk2exe for build directives. The installer is built using Inno Setup. All graphics were created using Inkscape.

A copy of all the development files is available for download.

Licence

7-ade is copyright 2016–2020 Daniel Beardsmore. The 7-ade application (“program”) and source code are made available under the zlib license, the terms of which are included in a separate document. The program may be used without restriction free of charge.

Name

The name of my original 7-Zip wrapper (written in Perl and supporting only zip files) was “7-Up”. The name change to “7-ade” allowed the program to have a unique identity, and to allow me to restart the version numbering from 1.0, as 7-ade is the program that 7-Up was always meant to be but never was.

“7-ade” can be thought of as either “Sevenade” (an own-brand soft drink) or as “Seven-aid” (artificial sweetener for 7-Zip).

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