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Plexus Archiver

Collection of Plexus components to create archives or extract archives to a directory with a unified Archiver/UnArchiver API whatever the archive format is.

Interface Components for supported formats (as Plexus role hint)
Archiver bzip2, dir, ear, gzip, jar, mjar, rar (notice produces a jar), snappy, tar, tar.bz2 (tbz2), tar.gz (tgz), tar.snappy, tar.zst (tzst), tar.xz (txz), war, xz, zip, zst
UnArchiver bzip2, gzip, snappy, tar, tar.bz2 (tbz2), tar.gz (tgz), tar.snappy tar.zst (tzst), tar.xz (txz), xz, zip (also available as car, ear, esb, jar, nar, par, rar, sar, swc, war), zst

What is Plexus Archiver?

Plexus Archiver is a high-level Java API for creating and extracting archives (ZIP, JAR, TAR, etc.). It provides a simple, unified interface for working with various archive formats, abstracting away the low-level details of archive manipulation.

Comparison to Apache Commons Compress

Plexus Archiver builds on top of Apache Commons Compress (since version 2.5) and provides additional capabilities:

Apache Commons Compress

Commons Compress is a low-level library that provides:

  • Direct access to archive formats and compression algorithms
  • Fine-grained control over archive entries and their attributes
  • Support for a wide range of archive formats (ZIP, TAR, AR, CPIO, etc.)
  • Streaming API for memory-efficient processing

Plexus Archiver

Plexus Archiver is a higher-level abstraction layer that adds:

Simplified API: Easy-to-use builder-style interface for common archiving tasks without dealing with low-level stream handling.

Advanced Features:

  • File selectors and filtering capabilities
  • Automatic handling of file permissions and attributes
  • Built-in support for directory scanning with includes/excludes patterns
  • Reproducible builds support (configurable timestamps and ordering)
  • Duplicate handling strategies
  • File mappers for transforming entry names during archiving/unarchiving
  • Protection against ZIP bombs (configurable output size limits)

Build Tool Integration: Designed for integration with build tools like Maven, with support for:

  • Modular JAR creation (Java 9+ modules)
  • Manifest generation and customization
  • Archive finalizers for post-processing

Dependency Injection Ready: Includes JSR-330 annotations for easy integration with dependency injection frameworks.

When to Use Which?

Use Apache Commons Compress when:

  • You need fine-grained control over archive format details
  • You're working with streaming data or large archives
  • You need to support specialized or uncommon archive formats
  • Memory efficiency is critical

Use Plexus Archiver when:

  • You want a simple, declarative API for common archiving tasks
  • You're building a Maven plugin or similar build tool
  • You need reproducible builds with consistent archive ordering
  • You want built-in file filtering and selection capabilities
  • You need to create modular JARs or other specialized Java archives