NextZip

A 7-Zip-style archive manager plugin for Nextpad++ (Linux / GTK4; port of the macOS plugin). Built on the official 7-Zip engine (linked in-process via the COM IInArchive/IOutArchive API), so it handles every format 7-Zip supports.

Status

• ✅ 7-Zip engine (v26.01) fetched from 7-zip.org at build time (not vendored), sha256-verified, and built as a shared lib (deps/7z.so) via deps/build-7z-engine.sh (upstream's own gcc makefiles; native asm on arm64).
• ✅ In-process engine wrapper (src/SevenZipEngine.{h,cpp}) — dlopens the engine, auto-detects format, opens + lists entries (name/size/packed/CRC/ method/mtime/encrypted). Validated on 7z, zip, tar, gzip, and rar.
• ✅ Dockable two-pane File-Manager (NextZipController, GTK4): a filesystem browser on top (single-click an archive to view it) and the archive contents below (breadcrumb, drill into folders, Extract/Test/Info).
• ✅ Open a file from an archive in the editor (extract-on-the-fly to temp); saving it writes the edit back into the archive (writable formats only).
• ✅ Transparent nested-archive descent: .tar.gz / .tar.bz2 / .tar.xz open straight to the inner tar's files, and save-back re-wraps outward.

Next

Add/Delete entries, drag-out-to-extract, create-new-archive, password + progress sheets.

Formats

• Extract / browse: detection is by content signature (not extension), over ~30 formats — 7z, zip, rar / rar5, tar, gz, bz2, xz, z, cab, xar, rpm, deb, arj, lzh, chm, nsis, msi/compound, cpio, plus disk images iso, udf, dmg, hfs, apfs, squashfs, cramfs, ext, wim, vhd, vhdx, vdi, vmdk, qcow.
• Create / save-back: 7z, zip, tar, gz, bz2, xz, wim (the 7-Zip writable set).
• RAR is extraction-only — the RAR compression algorithm is proprietary and cannot be created by anything but WinRAR (unRAR license). NextZip never offers "create RAR".

Build

cmake -S . -B build && cmake --build build   # builds deps/7z.so automatically when missing
cmake --install build   # → ~/.local/share/nextpad++/plugins/NextZip/{NextZip.so, 7z.so}

The first build downloads the 7-Zip source (~1.5 MB) from 7-zip.org and sha256-verifies it; subsequent builds reuse deps/7zip/.

Licensing

• NextZip: GPL (same family as Nextpad++).
• Engine: 7-Zip — LGPL-2.1, with the unRAR restriction on the RAR codec (License.txt, unRarLicense.txt from the 7-Zip source, shipped alongside the plugin). The RAR sources may not be used to build a RAR-compatible archiver.