[Feature] Flash from .img.{gz,bz,xz,…} and .zip

[Salamandar]

Something Etcher still does "better" is handling archives. For the moment we need to extract then flash with Popsicle.

Would it be hard to implement ? Could a newbie in Rust implement this ?

[ids1024]

Seems like a good feature to add.

Would it be hard to implement ? Could a newbie in Rust implement this?

I don't think it would be too hard. But it might not be too straightforward for someone without familiarity with Rust and Popsicle's code to add.

Probably the library code could be updated to decompress the file on-the-fly, either with libraries on subprocesses. And while not strictly required, the GUI and CLI should probably display something to indicate that the compression format is recognized.

[ids1024]

Do you have some examples of isos distributed compressed like this? It seems the convention of Linux distros is to use a plain iso, but containing a squashfs filesystem.

[Salamandar]

Do you have some examples of isos distributed compressed like this? It seems the convention of Linux distros is to use a plain iso, but containing a squashfs filesystem.

Actually, I was using Popsicle to flash SD cards for Raspberry pi or other ARM boards. Those usually are provided as .zip.
Obviously, I'm not talking about filesystem tree archives like ArchlinuxARM provides, but disk images like Raspbian ;)

[ergpopler]

Do you have some examples of isos distributed compressed like this? It seems the convention of Linux distros is to use a plain iso, but containing a squashfs filesystem.

https://www.freebsd.org/ | has xz ISO's
I've seen a few linux distros do the same.

[ChaosBlades]

Here are some examples. As mentioned Raspberry Pi .img files are usually provided zipped. Which these are.
https://github.com/cadriel/FluiddPI/releases/tag/v1.15.0
https://octoprint.org/download/
https://github.com/raymondh2/MainsailOS/releases

[perroboc]

Bump because I was following the guide from Steam and this would've come in handy:

https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/1b71-edf2-eb6d-2bb3

The image comes in .img.bz2 format

[cassidyjames]

Endless OS also uses both .img.xz and .img.gz images for deployments of the OS.

[sofiedotcafe]

Fedora ARM64 images use .raw.xz and .img.xz

[taltamir]

until such an ability is implemented, it should instead recognize it and warn the user
something like:

you are trying to flash an img.xz file. compressed img files are currently not supported. please extract the file to get the .img and flash that instead.

[JaggedJax]

Just to add more examples, Home Assistant publishes as img.xz

https://www.home-assistant.io/installation/generic-x86-64