Migration

Purpose

Guide for migrating from other archive tools to Excavate.

From Rubyzip

Basic Extraction

Rubyzip
require 'zip'

Zip::File.open('archive.zip') do |zip_file|
  zip_file.each do |entry|
    entry.extract(entry.name)
  end
end
Excavate
require 'excavate'

Excavate::Archive.new('archive.zip').extract

Extract Specific Files

Rubyzip
Zip::File.open('archive.zip') do |zip_file|
  entry = zip_file.find_entry('config.json')
  entry&.extract('config.json')
end
Excavate
Excavate::Archive.new('archive.zip').extract(files: ['config.json'])

From ruby-archive

Basic Extraction

ruby-archive
Archive.read.open('archive.zip') do |archive|
  archive.each do |entry|
    # Manual extraction
  end
end
Excavate
Excavate::Archive.new('archive.zip').extract

From System Tools

Using unzip

unzip (shell)
unzip archive.zip -d output/
Excavate
Excavate::Archive.new('archive.zip').extract('output')

Using tar

tar (shell)
tar -xzf archive.tar.gz -C output/
Excavate
Excavate::Archive.new('archive.tar.gz').extract('output')

Using 7z

7z (shell)
7z x archive.7z -ooutput/
Excavate
Excavate::Archive.new('archive.7z').extract('output')

Advantages of Excavate

Unified Interface

One API for all formats:

# Same code works for all formats
Excavate::Archive.new('file.zip').extract
Excavate::Archive.new('file.tar.gz').extract
Excavate::Archive.new('file.msi').extract

Recursive Extraction

Handle nested archives automatically:

# MSI → CAB → Files
Excavate::Archive.new('installer.msi').extract(recursive_packages: true)

No System Dependencies

Works without native tools:

  • No unzip, tar, or 7z required

  • Consistent behavior across platforms

  • Easy deployment

When to Keep Native Tools

Consider keeping native tools when:

  • Maximum performance required

  • Very large archives (>1GB)

  • Advanced features needed (encryption, multi-volume)

Migration Checklist

  1. Identify archive formats in use

  2. Replace format-specific code with Excavate

  3. Test extraction results

  4. Update error handling

  5. Remove native tool dependencies

See Also