• Proposals for installation drivers
• Drivers
  • PHP Extensions
  • Utilities + bridge
  • Pure PHP
• Full support matrix

Type	Pros	Cons	Useful for
PHP Exteniosn	Fast, supports a lot of functions	Sometimes can not support specific functions (e.g. password-protection in zip on old php versions)	Use it when possible (when extensions installed)
Utilities + bridge	Uses system utilities, so should be fast (and even faster PHP Extensions)	Do not support streaming	Packing a lot of files / Unpacking the whole archives without streaming
Pure PHP	Works without PHP Extensions or system utilities, can be installed via composer only	Uses a lot of memory, lack of speed	Fallback method

Proposals for installation drivers

• In common case:
  • install TarByPear, NelexaZip
  • If installed 7za utility - configure SevenZip driver
  • Else if installed tar or unzip utilities - configure AlchemyZippy driver
• In docker/on VDS:
  • install all php extensions (zip, rar, phar, zlib, bz2)
  • install utility (7za - p7zip-full on ubuntu) and SevenZip driver

Drivers

PHP extensions

Driver	Formats	php extension	notes
Zip	zip, jar	zip	supports password-protection since 7.2.0
Rar	rar	rar	read-only mode
TarByPhar	zip, tar, tar.gz, tar.bz2	phar	Has a bug #71966 in ext-phar (related issue) - an archive will ./ in paths cannot be opened.

PHP extensions for compression only

These drivers support only compressed (not archived) data. They support opening, extracting&streaming and creation.

Driver	Formats	PHP extension
Bzip	.bz2	bzip2
Gzip	.gz	zlib
Lzma	.xz	xz - 5.x / 7.x

Utilities + bridge

Driver	Formats	utility + bridge
SevenZip	7z, xz, bzip2, gzip, tar, zip, wim, ar, arj, cab, chm, cpio, cramfs, dmg, ext, fat, gpt, hfs, ihex, iso, lzh, lzma, mbr, msi, nsis, ntfs, qcow2, rar, rpm, squashfs, udf, uefi, vdi, vhd, vmdk, wim, xar, z	p7zip (7za) + gemorroj/archive7z
AlchemyZippy	zip, tar, tar.gz, tar.bz2	zip/tar + alchemy/zippy

If you install SevenZip and AlchemyZippy at the same time:

1. You should specify symfony/console version before installation to any 3.x.x version: composer require symfony/process:~3.4, because they require different symfony/process versions.
2. Install archive7z version 4.0.0: composer require gemorroj/archive7z:~4.0

Pure php implementation

Works with binary data in php-land (= eats a lot of memory for big archives).

Driver	Formats	library	notes
NelexaZip	zip	nelexa/zip and optionally php-extensions (bz2, fileinfo, iconv, openssl)
SplitbrainPhpArchive	zip, tar, tar.gz, tar.bz2	splitbrain/php-archive and optionally php-extensions (zlib, bz2)
TarByPear	tar, tar.gz, tar.bz2, tar.xz, tar.Z	pear/archive_tar and optionally php-extensions (zlib, bzip2, xz - 5.x / 7.x	dont support updating archive (deleteFiles)
Cab	cab	wapmorgan/cab-archive	Getting files content and extraction is supported only on PHP 7.0.22+, 7.1.8+, 7.2.0. Support only opening & extraction
Iso	iso	phpclasses/php-iso-file	Support only opening & extraction

Full support matrix

Result of ./vendor/bin/cam system:formats when all drivers installed and configured (except of AlchemyZippy):

+-----------------+------------+------+------+------+-------+--------+--------+--------+-----------+-----+-----+-----+------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+------+-------+
| driver / format | zip        | rar  | gz   | bz2  | xz    | tar    | tgz    | tbz2   | 7z        | cab | iso | arj | uefi | gpt | mbr | msi | dmg | rpm | deb | udf | txz  | tar.z |
+-----------------+------------+------+------+------+-------+--------+--------+--------+-----------+-----+-----+-----+------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+------+-------+
| Zip             | oOtxsadTcC |      |      |      |       |        |        |        |           |     |     |     |      |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |      |       |
| Rar             |            | oOxs |      |      |       |        |        |        |           |     |     |     |      |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |      |       |
| Gzip            |            |      | oxsc |      |       |        |        |        |           |     |     |     |      |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |      |       |
| Bzip            |            |      |      | oxsc |       |        |        |        |           |     |     |     |      |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |      |       |
| Lzma            |            |      |      |      | oxsc  |        |        |        |           |     |     |     |      |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |      |       |
| TarByPhar       | oxsadc     |      |      |      |       | oxsadc | oxsadc | oxsadc |           |     |     |     |      |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |      |       |
| SevenZip        | oOxadcC    |      |      |      |       | oxadc  |        |        | oOtxadTcC | ox  | ox  | ox  | ox   | ox  | ox  | ox  | ox  | ox  | ox  | ox  |      |       |
| AlchemyZippy    |            |      |      |      |       |        |        |        |           |     |     |     |      |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |      |       |
| NelexaZip       | oOxad      |      |      |      |       |        |        |        |           |     |     |     |      |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |      |       |
| TarByPear       |            |      |      |      |       | oxac   | oxac   | oxac   |           |     |     |     |      |     |     |     |     |     |     |     | oxac |       |
| Iso             |            |      |      |      |       |        |        |        |           |     | ox  |     |      |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |      |       |
| Cab             |            |      |      |      |       |        |        |        |           | ox  |     |     |      |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |      |       |
+-----------------+------------+------+------+------+-------+--------+--------+--------+-----------+-----+-----+-----+------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+------+-------+

• o - open
• O - open (+password)
• t - get comment
• x - extract
• s - stream
• a - append
• d - delete
• T - set comment
• c - create
• C - create (+password)