How to Compress a File into XIP Format on macOS

compressionxcodezip

I wanted to compress the Xcode.app I downloaded from the app store into .xip format. Is it the same as compressing it to .zip and renaming?

Best Answer

No, .xip files have nothing to do with .zip files - it's not the same format at all. .xip files are really a type of xar archive.

If you want to compress your own .xip file, you can do that with the xip command in macOS:

xip file1 file2 file3 archive.xip

However you cannot compress Xcode.app to a .xip file and send that to others and expect them to be able to just unpack it by double-clicking. The file will be verified to see if the .xip is signed by Apple - if it is not, it will not be automatically unpacked.

Related Solutions

Is Mac OS X’s Compress a “standard” zip

As its man page states,

The compress utility reduces the size of files using adaptive Lempel-Ziv coding.

In contrast, the zip command (also present in Mac OS X, at least in Mountain Lion) uses a different algorithm. If a publisher is expecting a zip-compressed file, a file compressed with compress is something different, and will not work for this.

How to add a file into zip

AFAIK There's no (free) onboard app to achieve this.

The easiest way would be to do it via command line.

zip /path/to/zipfile.zip file1 file2

If you want to add all(!) files within a directory and subdirectories, run

zip -r /path/to/zipfile.zip /path/to/dir

It will also add .DS_Store files and that like, so be careful with the latter command.

However, if you're fine with spending some money, you could take a look at http://macitbetter.com. They provide an app called BetterZip 2 which is also capable of doing what you want.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Is Mac OS X’s Compress a “standard” zip

How to add a file into zip

Related Question