xfcat

xfcat is a command-line tool for packing & unpacking X4: Foundations & mod .cat/.dat files.

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Quick Links

• Installation
• Usage
• Filter Syntax
• Building
• License

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Installation

Pre-built binaries are available for Linux, Windows, and macOS from the releases page, just download, and place wherever you like.

Usage

Since X4 packages consist of .cat/.dat file pairs, we will use the term package when refering to them as a whole.

xfcat functionality is divided into various 'commands', a brief overview:

Note

Package paths for both list/unpack commands can point to either the .cat file, or the .dat file, or the extension can be omitted altogether, however an incorrect file extension will still be seen as an error.

Usage: xfcat <COMMAND>

Commands:
  list    list contents specified packages
  unpack  extract contents of specified packages
  pack    pack a directory into a mod package
  help    Print this message or the help of the given subcommand(s)

Options:
  -h, --help     Print help
  -V, --version  Print version

To list the contents of packages, use the list command:

Usage: xfcat list [OPTIONS] <INPUTS>...

Arguments:
  <INPUTS>...  input files

Options:
  -H, --human-readable    display sizes as K/M/G etc
  -f, --filter <PATTERN>  glob pattern to match file paths against.
  -n, --name              sort alphabetically by name
  -S, --size              sort by file size, largest first
  -t, --time              sort by time, newest first
  -r, --reverse           reverse order while sorting
  -h, --help              Print help (see more with '--help')

To extract 1 or more packages to a given location, use the the unpack command:

Usage: xfcat unpack [OPTIONS] <INPUTS>...

Arguments:
  <INPUTS>...  input files

Options:
  -o, --out <DIR>         output directory [default: ./out]
  -t, --threads <COUNT>   number of threads to use
  -n, --no-verify         skip verification of file hashes
  -u, --use-subdirs       create separate subdirectories for each package
  -f, --filter <PATTERN>  glob pattern to match file paths against.
  -h, --help              Print help (see more with '--help')

To pack a given directory into a mod package, use the pack command:

Usage: xfcat pack [OPTIONS] <DIR>

Arguments:
  <DIR>  source directory

Options:
  -n, --name <NAME>       output name
  -o, --out <OUT>         output directory
  -f, --filter <PATTERN>  glob pattern to match file paths against.
  -h, --help              Print help (see more with '--help')

Building

To build, you will need a working installation of Rust (including the necessary toolchain for your platform), xfcat should compile with 1.94.1 (stable) or newer.

To build, either clone this repo, or grab a source archive from the releases page, and then:

$ cargo build --release
$ ./target/release/xfcat --version
xfcat x.y.z

Running tests

Most critical functionality is covered by tests, to run them all, use:

$ cargo test --all

from the repository root.

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License

xfcat is distributed completely free of charge: you can redistribute
it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY
WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

To see the full license text, see LICENSE