pa 1.0.0

Package Analyzer

This program analyzes a destination to determine anchors for package installation. An anchor is a folder name or file extension which is only present in a specific folder. If a source directory is provided, the anchors are used to create a folder merge map. This program is meant to help with installing arbitrary packages which the user or a package manager doen't know what to do with.

Anchors

This program is centered around the concept of anchors. An anchor is some kind of identifying information about a file, such as file header or glob. Version 1.0.0 of this program only recognizes folder names and file extensions, but future plans include support for file headers and globs. This program maps anchors to directories in an effort to determine how a package should be installed. For exaple, games made with the Creaton Engine have built-in support for a plugin system, through which the game loads its own files. This program can recognize a plugin by analyzing the game files and finding that all .esp files are in the uniquely named Data folder. As a result, any software package which has a Data folder or an .esp file can be recognized regardless of where in the package's file tree these items reside. For example:

arbitrary/
    folders/
        skse_version_number/
            skse_loader.exe
            skse.dll
            Data/
                Scripts/
                    (many .pex files)

This folder structure contains a package designed for a creation game, but is not properly packaged to be recognized by any existing tools. Using the package analyzer, we can understand how to handle this package:

> pa -d "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Skyrim" -s D:\Downloads\arbitrary
["arbitrary/folders/skse_version_number":"Skyrim"]

The package analyzer can correctly determine that the skse_version_number directory should be merged with the Skyrim directory to install this package. For a simpler example, many software packages come packaged arbitrarily, like so:

softwareVersion/
    Software Name/
        software.exe
        software.dll

This is the worst case scenario for the package analyzer, where there is no wrong way per-se to install the software, as long as the .exe file ends up on the PATH or desktop or start menu. The package analyzer can still be used to prevent having multiple versions of the software across updates by eliminating the uneccesary directories:

> pa -d "C:\Program Files\Common Files" -s softwareVersion
["Software Name":"Common Files"]

Note that the package analyzer uses the / charachter to store the base name of the destination in the anchor map, for the purpose of eliminating uneccesary directory structures when no other anchors could be found.

Configuration

Future plans include the ability to use an anchor map stored in a file, passed via command line, or fed via stdin to aid the package analyzer in performing it's job. In creation games, for example, there are more supported file types for plugins than are present in the game's Data directory. A user or package manager would want the package analyzer to recognize these files as well to ensure all packages are correctly parsed.