p7zip is necessary for opening .7z archives in Ark. Without it, Ark fails when encountering 7zip archives with the following error:
Loading the archive failed with the following error: No suitable plugin found. Ark does not seem to support this file type.
p7zip is listed as a recommended dependency in Debian and Ubuntu and as an optional dependency in Arch Linux.
makes me wonder how often you have to work with 7z files that I need to add it as a rundep to ark. Since I'm working with Linux I never came accross that file format
We use .7z as the standard archive format in our company, for the following reasons:
So, in our default Ubuntu installation, we always include p7zip.
Among the archives we receive, .zip, .rar and .tar.gz are the most common, but we are starting to see some major microelectronics factories distributing .7z files as well.
@Girtablulu FWIW, on MATE, I didn't put p7zip as a runtime dependency of engrampa too because this format isn't commonly used by most people.
I don't see the point of imposing a piece of software to every user because some might eventually use it. These few users can install it.
I don't want Solus to become an Ubuntu like where lots of things are installed / enabled in case someone would need it.
Just my two cents.
EDIT: I see it's not a dependency of file-roller too.
Yea I don't see a reason for it to be added as a rundep for file-roller either or part of the images.
Linux users used to use .xz, but Windows users don't have a GUI tool to create .xz;
Right, but that's Windows and this is Linux, so the point is kinda moot.
compression ratio of .zip and .gz is pathetic for our electronic design data, while .xz and .7z offers a few times better compression ratio;
I think this is a very specific use case that doesn't warrant an additional file archiver being installed for everyone though. I appreciate the fact you're explaining your use case but we have loads of archive and compression options under Linux that are superior, already supported through utilities like tar, and likely to be supported by whatever the Linux user is typically downloading.
Among the archives we receive, .zip, .rar and .tar.gz are the most common, but we are starting to see some major microelectronics factories distributing .7z files as well.
I'm sure if you're working with something as technical as microelectronics you have the technical ability to download a single package.
Finding and installing the right package is fine for us advanced users, but I'm worried a newbie will get stuck on this and say "Linux is so hard!" and quit. Newbies are also the people who will most likely encounter a 7zip archive, as they are less likely to be software developers/engineers and more likely to have normal office jobs.
At least we should patch these archive extraction programs so that they display a little popup telling users to install the p7zip package when a 7zip archive is detected. Or something similar to that. This could even be expanded to work for all programs that need specific plugins to access specific data types.
Newbies are also the people who will most likely encounter a 7zip archive
From where? What places could possibly be delivering files in 7z format? Most are in tarballs, rars, or zips.
At least we should patch these archive extraction programs so that they display a little popup telling users to install the p7zip package when a 7zip archive is detected.
No, this is silly. We're not installing the universe to handle what are potentially extremely niche cases. If someone has a specific file type they can't open and need help, that is precisely why we have support channels like IRC and the forums, and we're not patching a bunch of file archivers just to present them with names of packages they would need to install to decompress a file.
The popularity of .7z varies significantly, depending who you talk to. 7zip is more popular among Windows users, because WinRAR isn't free, and there's no GUI for xz.
I'm not saying that 7z must be set as a rundep of Ark, but wants to point out that 7z is not rare. I searched "7z dataset" in my search engine, and see the following examples among thousands more:
A totally unscientific benchmark is shown below on a IC design database on my laptop. This is a relatively small design. There are files that are over 10x in size.
size compression time original: 884MB - zip: 137MB 44s gz: 137MB 46s xz: 48MB 258s 7z: 47MB 65s lrzip: 37MB 258s
If I want to sent the database to a Windows user over the internet, 7z is the obvious choice.
lrzip is the truly rare format, despite its impressive compression ratio, partly due to its huge memory consumption during compression.
because WinRAR isn't free, and there's no GUI for xz.
Peazip is a thing.
I searched "7z dataset" in my search engine, and see the following examples among thousands more:
You then proceed to show basically all technical material, which further proves my point.
Either way, this was specifically about adding it as a rundep of ark, so this is getting off topic :)