10.4: An Automator plug-in to tar and gzip in the Finder

Aug 05, '05 09:10:00AM

Contributed by: sporkstorms

Tiger only hintI've written an Automator workflow that can be used as a Finder plug-in to tar and gzip any selected files or folders.

First, download the action. After it's downloaded, do this to get it working:

  1. Double click the tgz folder.dmg disk image to mount it.
  2. From your home folder, make the following hierarchy of folders if it doesn't already exist: /Library -> Workflows -> Applications -> Finder
  3. Drag the tgz.workflow workflow from the disk image into the Finder folder you just created.
Now you can select files or folders in the Finder, control- or right-click, go to the Automator sub-menu, and select tgz to compress them.

[robg adds: I've mirrored the action in case the above download link goes away some day. Since 10.4 now retains resource fork info with all the command line utilities, this should be safe to use on any files. I tested it, and was able to compress (and the decompress) a set of files without any troubles. Note that you can also put the workflow in your user's Library folder, following the same structure as above, instead of the top-level Library -- this would install it only for your user instead of all users on the system.]

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