Install atool with Homebrew, apk, apt, dnf, MacPorts, Nix, pacman, zypper, winget

Project links

• Homepage
• Repository
• Upstream docs
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• acat
• adiff
• als
• apack
• arepack
• atool
• aunpack

Project history

The official Savannah project page describes atool as a script for managing many archive types, including tar, tar+gzip, and zip. The project is administered by Oskar Liljeblad, is listed as non-GNU software on Savannah, and was registered there on 5 July 2005 with production/stable status.

The 0.39.0 release tarball's NEWS file shows a longer pre-Savannah history, with releases documented back to at least 2002 and copyright years beginning in 2001. The 2005 Savannah-era 0.30.0 release added 7-Zip, ALZip, and Debian package support; 0.31.0 quickly followed with a serious adiff symlink-removal bug fix and the arepack command.

Later releases expanded archive support and portability: Cabinet archives in 0.32.0, lzma in 0.34.0, rzip/lrzip/pbzip2 and configurable file-based detection in 0.35.0, xz/lzip in 0.37.0, and plzip, lbzip2, and pigz support in 0.39.0.

Adoption history

atool's adoption comes from its promise to make archive commands predictable. Savannah's project description highlights aunpack's safer extraction behavior: it extracts into a temporary directory first, avoids scattering archive contents, and prevents local files from being overwritten by mistake.

The input package facts show atool packaged across Homebrew, Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Alpine, Arch, MacPorts, Nix, and openSUSE. That broad packaging footprint fits a mature Unix utility whose value is not novelty but muscle memory: packagers expose one small Perl script and users get a uniform interface over many archiver binaries.

How it is used

The man page documents separate commands for common operations: `aunpack` extracts, `apack` creates archives, `als` lists, `acat` writes archived files to stdout, `adiff` compares archives, and `arepack` converts between archive formats.

atool detects archive formats by extension unless the user supplies a format, falling back to `file` for difficult cases such as rar-style numeric extensions when configured. Configuration is simple key/value text loaded from hardcoded defaults, `/etc/atool.conf`, then `~/.atoolrc`, with `--config` and `--option` overrides for one-off runs.

Why package nerds care

atool is a classic package-nerd utility: it is small, scriptable, old, and useful because it normalizes other command-line tools rather than replacing them. Its dependencies are the archive programs already found in Unix package sets.

It also has the kind of changelog package maintainers care about. Archive format support, safe extraction semantics, symlink bugs, macOS build fixes, and compression-tool detection are all practical downstream concerns.

Timeline

• 2001: Earliest copyright year in the official 0.39.0 man page.
• 2002: NEWS documents atool 0.23.0 and 0.25.0 releases.
• 2005-07: Savannah project registration and atool 0.30.0 release.
• 2005-08: atool 0.31.0 fixed a serious adiff symlink-removal bug and added arepack.
• 2008: 0.35.0 added rzip, lrzip, pbzip2, and more file-identification options.
• 2009: 0.37.0 added lzip and xz support.
• 2012: 0.39.0 added plzip, lbzip2, and pigz support.

Related projects

• atool is conceptually adjacent to libarchive/bsdtar, p7zip, unrar, unzip, tar, gzip, bzip2, xz, and other archiver commands. Unlike libarchive-based tools, atool is a coordinator over external programs.

Sources

• Official Savannah project page.
• Official Savannah release index.
• Official atool 0.39.0 NEWS and atool.1 from release tarball.
• input source_facts.package-manager.