Proposal: support for editing ZIP archives

[BjarniRunar]

Hello! Thanks for pyzipper, it's great!

I am relying on it in my work on Mailpile 2 (moggie), since ZIP files are the closest thing we've got to a semi-standardized cross-platform encrypted container format.

I will need to fork and enhance pyzipper to support removing and updating files within an archive, probably in two phases for performance reasons (deletion would edit the table of contents and overwrite the data with zeros, and there would be a separate function for compacting the archive to reclaim space - updating would overwrite in place if there is room, or delete and append otherwise). While I am at it, I would probably also add functions to rename files within the archive.

I'm not sure exactly what the timeline for that work will be, but sometime within the next 2-3 months probably?

Would you be interested in accepting pull requests to add this functionality?

[danifus]

Hi, yeah that sounds like a good feature. It would be good if it was behind an option to keep the current behaviour by default.

Thanks,
Dan

[BjarniRunar]

Well, I am pretty sure this works! I was wondering whether you think you'll be able to take a look at the PR any time soon?

I don't mean to be impatient, but I am attending PyCon UK later this month and it had occurred to me that it might be fun to give a lightning talk about this stuff. I can still do so even if the PR is pending, but it's always more to fun to be able to present something people can use right away.

Obviously you have your own priorities and if you are busy, I totally understand. But I figured I´d at least let you know the conference was a thing.

[danifus]

Hi,

Thanks for the PR! Life is pretty busy at the moment but I'll try and get to it before pycon UK starts. Looks like I will also have to fix an issue with my tox config :p

[BjarniRunar]

Well, I gave the talk! It was only a quick lightning talk, but pyzipper got a shout out and I had fun conversations afterwards. Here's a link in case you are interested: https://youtu.be/O2ApDUsPDSc?t=3740

(In case that doesn't take you to the right part of the video, it's at the very end, my talk was the last one.)

[olfMombach]

@danifus any news on the PR acceptance?