SYNOPSIS

gcf --create <gcf> [input1 [input2 […]]]

gcf --extract <gcf> [--output=<dir>] …

gcf --list <gcf>

gcf --copy <gcf_source> <gcf_target>

gcf --compress (<file>|<dir>)*

gcf --decompress (<file>|<dir>)*

gcf --to-zip <gcf_source> <zip_target>

gcf --from-zip <zip_source> <gcf_target>

DESCRIPTION

This tool can build a GCF archive from a given list of files and files within given directories. It can extract the files from a GCF archive and write them to a directory or to a set of files given by a pattern.

A GCF archive provides interleaved storage of multiple large files within one very large file. The GCF file structure was designed with distributed file systems and distributed applications in mind. The key points of the structure are that a GCF file contains one or more clusters and each of those clusters contains 2 or more blocks. One block in each cluster is reserved for meta data.

OPERATIONS

--create

Create a GCF archive in a file. This is the default.

-x, --extract

Extract files from GCF archive. By default files are extracted into the working directory. This behaviour can be changed with the --output option. When no additional arguments are given, all fields are extracted. If additional arguments are given only files matching one of the arguments are extracted.

-l, --list

List the files contained within the archive.

--copy

Create a new archive by copying the contents of an existing archive. This is useful to change the compression policy for an archive.

-c, --compress

For every argument name that is a file, the file is compressed according to the policy and written as name.gzf. For every argument name that is a directory, the contents are compressed into the GCF archive name.gcf.

-d, --decompress

Reverse operation of --compress.

--to-zip

Copy the contents of the GCF archive to a ZIP archive.

--from-zip

Copy the contents of the ZIP archive to a GCF archive.

OPTIONS

-f, --force

By default extraction to a directory fails is a file or directory already exists. If this flag is used any existing file or directory is removed.

--block-size=BYTES

Size of a block in bytes. Defaults to 32,768.

--cluster-size=BLOCKS

Number of blocks in a cluster. Defaults to 32.

-z, --compression=<policy>

Set the compression policy used in the archive. The default is to apply gzip to every file. On specifying compression policies, see below.

-o, --output=STRING

Specify the directory into which the --extract should write the extracted files.

--zip-code=<policy>

Set the compression policy used for ZIP archives. The default is no encoding. On specifying compression policies, see below.

General Options

-v

Increase the level of verbosity

-q

Be quiet; do not print anything to the terminal.

--debug=<file.c>

Enable debugging output for file.c (option allowed multiple times).

--version

Print version string of this tool.

-h, --help

Print help text

--usage

Print short usage summary.

COMPRESSION POLICIES

The grammer for compression policies is:

<policy>      ::= ( <pattern> ":" <compression> ";" ) *  <compression>
<pattern>     ::= 'shell wildcard pattern'
<compression> ::= "" | "none" | (<filter> "|") * <filter>
<filter>      ::= "diff32" | ("gzip" [("1"|...|"9")])

The list of <pattern>":"<compression> pairs are rules that specify specific compression methods for files matching certain patterns. The final <compression> is the default.

A compression method is built from zero or more filters. The empty sequence can be denoted with an emtpy string or with the word none. Known compression filters are

diff32

Difference ecoding on 32 bit integers.

gzip[level]

Standard gzip compression with an optional level.

When compressing labeled transition systems that were obtained using BFS exploration order, it is a good idea to apply difference encoding to state numbers before compression them. This leads to a default compression strategy of

src*:diff32|gzip;dest*:diff32|gzip;gzip

For the legacy directory format and

*ofs:diff32|gzip;gzip

For the state label extended directory format.

EXAMPLE

Given a GCF archive generated.gcf that contains an LTS, we can extract a dir as follows:

gcf -x generated.gcf generated.dir

The inverse (transforming generated.dir to generated.gcf) is also possible, but it is better to use ltsmin-convert(1) for this task because the best compression is achieved by applying different compressions to different files, which cannot be specified with -z.

EXIT STATUS

0

Successful termination.

>0

Some error occurred.