Omnizip Suite

Purpose

Overview of the Omnizip suite and how Excavate integrates with other projects.

Suite Overview

Excavate is part of the Omnizip family of pure Ruby compression libraries:

Project Purpose

Omnizip

Comprehensive compression library

Cabriolet

Microsoft compression formats

Excavate

Unified extraction interface

Omnizip

Omnizip is a comprehensive compression library supporting multiple formats.

Supported Formats

  • 7z - 7-Zip format

  • ZIP - Standard ZIP format

  • RAR4/5 - RAR archives

  • TAR - Unix tape archive

  • ISO - ISO disk images

  • XAR - eXtensible ARchive

  • RPM - Red Hat packages

  • OLE - OLE compound documents

  • XZ - LZMA compression

  • GZIP - GNU ZIP

  • BZIP2 - Bzip2 compression

  • CPIO - Copy In/Out

  • PAR2 - Parity archives

Features

  • Encryption support

  • Multi-volume archives

  • Pure Ruby implementation

Cabriolet

Cabriolet specializes in Microsoft compression formats.

Supported Formats

  • CAB - Microsoft Cabinet

  • CHM - Compiled HTML Help

  • SZDD - Single-file compression

  • KWAJ - KWAJ compression

  • HLP - Windows Help files

  • LIT - Microsoft Reader eBooks

  • OAB - Offline Address Book

Features

  • Full bidirectional support (read/write)

  • Multiple compression algorithms

  • Salvage mode for damaged archives

Excavate

Excavate builds on Omnizip and Cabriolet to provide:

  • Unified extraction interface

  • Recursive extraction

  • Format-agnostic API

  • CLI tool

How They Work Together 

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                    Excavate                         │
│            (Unified Extraction API)                 │
└───────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────┘
                        │
          ┌─────────────┴─────────────┐
          │                           │
          ▼                           ▼
┌─────────────────────┐     ┌─────────────────────┐
│      Omnizip        │     │     Cabriolet       │
│ (ZIP, 7z, TAR, etc) │     │ (CAB, CHM, etc)     │
└─────────────────────┘     └─────────────────────┘

Using Multiple Libraries

You can use Excavate alongside Omnizip or Cabriolet:

require 'excavate'
require 'omnizip'

# Use Excavate for extraction
Excavate::Archive.new('archive.zip').extract

# Use Omnizip directly for other operations
Omnizip::Zip.compress('output.zip', files)

Shared Characteristics

All Omnizip suite libraries:

  • Pure Ruby - No native dependencies

  • Cross-platform - Linux, macOS, Windows

  • Well-tested - Comprehensive test suites

  • Documented - Full API documentation

When to Use Which

Use Excavate when:

  • You need to extract archives

  • Format varies or is unknown

  • Recursive extraction is needed

Use Omnizip when:

  • You need compression (creation)

  • Working with specific formats

  • Need advanced features

Use Cabriolet when:

  • Working with Microsoft formats

  • Need CAB creation

  • Handling damaged archives

See Also