All,
cpio-mode for emacs seems to be stable and functional, so I've published a beta version at
https://github.com/dlewan/cpio-mode. I am currently trying to get it ready for ELPA.
Its user interface is like dired's, so I think it should be easy to use. You can read the NEWS file for details. There's also some documentation in cpio.el.
To use it:
1. Get the code from the above url.
2. Run »autoconf && ./configure«.
3. Install it.with »make simple_install«. (1. The default installation is in »~/local/share/emacs/lisp/cpio«. 2. I'm still trying to get byte compilation right.)
4. Add the installation directory to your load-path.
5. Load cpio-mode.
6. Modify your auto-mode-alist to handle the .cpio extension.
The following code should handle 4,5,6 for you:
(setq load-path (add-to-list 'load-path "~/local/share/emacs/lisp/cpio"))
(require 'cpio)
(if (featurep 'cpio)
(progn
(setq auto-mode-alist
(add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist
(cons "\\.cpio$" 'cpio-mode)))))(setq load-path (add-to-list 'load-path "~/local/share/emacs/lisp/cpio"))
(I'm not smart enough yet to get magic-fallback-mode-alist to work. Maybe I will be in a few days.)
Current features that I know it is missing:
* It does not handle devices. (And I'm not sure if it ever should.)
* It does not handle multiple hard links to an entry. (But someday it should.)
* It does not implement the entire dired interface.
* It does not handle special vendor-specific files.
* It does not handle the HP-specific formats. (Given that it doesn't handle devices, this may not matter. I'm happy to get any advice.)
* It does not handle tar(1) files. (I think tar-mode does that just fine.)
* It probably doesn't do things right under Windows.
* It's very rigid about certain cpio(1) options like --no-absolute-filenames, --swap-bytes, --block-size, --force-local, etc. (I'd really like advice about these.)
You can find more in the file QUESTIONS.
Thanks.
--
,Doug
Douglas Lewan
(908) 720-7908