uncompressed file in zip archive

[guy]

I need to put several files in a zip archive, the first has to be uncompressed (this is an ePub format ebook and the first file contains the mime type which utility tools need to be able to read without understanding decompression).

My Debian/Gnome desktop insists on compressing the file, so does gzip which is probably why. Can anybody suggest a zip creator for debian that does allow individual choice of compression?

[nelz]

gzip does not create zip files, it gzips single files or data streams. You want zip and use the -Z option to not compress the first file

Code: Select all

zip -Z store archive.zip firstfile
zip archive.zip all the other files

You can also use the --suffixes option to specify the suffixes of files that should not be compressed, but if you need the uncompressed file to be first in the archive, the above example is more reliable.

[guy]

guy@hostname:~/Downloads$ zip -Z store archive.zip mimetype
bash: zip: command not found

hence my attempt to use gzip. I tried looking in the repos but found loads of zip utils, many obviously not what was wanted and no easy way to pick a winner.

[nelz]

Which distro? On most the package is simply called zip.

The only thing zip and gzip have in common is the last three letters of their names.

[guy]

debian squeeze

[guy]

Ah, found zip. Not installed by default. Oddly, Synaptic's search wouldn't find it even though it's in the repos. I had to scroll to the bottom of the list. It found unzip though.

And yay, it worked! I have a valid ePub file.