Rusted ZIP

A high-performance CLI zip/unzip utility for Windows built with Rust, miniz_oxide, and rayon for parallel compression.

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Features

• Multi-threaded file reading via rayon
• Pure-Rust miniz_oxide deflate backend — no native C deps, no CMake required
• Buffered I/O throughout (BufReader / BufWriter)
• Recursive folder compression with walkdir
• Windows Explorer right-click context menu integration
• Single portable .exe — no runtime required

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Project Structure

win-zip/
├── src/
│   └── main.rs
├── Cargo.toml
├── install_context_menu.reg      ← Double-click to install registry keys
├── Install-RustedZip.ps1         ← PowerShell alternative (recommended)
└── README.md

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Step-by-Step Build Guide

Prerequisites

1. Install Rust (if not installed)

winget install Rustlang.Rustup
# or download from https://rustup.rs

After installation, restart your terminal and verify:

rustc --version
cargo --version

2. Install the MSVC target (required for Windows .exe)

rustup target add x86_64-pc-windows-msvc

The pure-Rust backend means no Visual Studio Build Tools or CMake are needed.

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Build Commands

Standard release build (MSVC — recommended):

cargo build --release --target x86_64-pc-windows-msvc

GNU toolchain alternative:

cargo build --release --target x86_64-pc-windows-gnu

The compiled binary will be at:

target\x86_64-pc-windows-msvc\release\rustedzip.exe

This is a fully self-contained, portable .exe — no DLLs or runtime needed.

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Installation

Step 1 — Place the binary

Copy rustedzip.exe to:

C:\Tools\rustedzip\rustedzip.exe

You can also add this folder to your system PATH for CLI use anywhere:

[Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable(
    "Path",
    $env:Path + ";C:\Tools\rustedzip",
    [System.EnvironmentVariableTarget]::Machine
)

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Step 2 — Install Context Menu (choose one method)

Option A: PowerShell (recommended — supports custom paths)

Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process

# Run as Administrator
.\Install-RustedZip.ps1

# Custom exe location
.\Install-RustedZip.ps1 -ExePath "D:\bin\rustedzip.exe"

# Uninstall
.\Install-RustedZip.ps1 -Uninstall

Stop-Process -Name explorer -Force; Start-Process explorer

Option B: Registry file

1. If you used a different path than C:\Tools\rustedzip\, open install_context_menu.reg in Notepad and replace every occurrence of C:\\Tools\\rustedzip\\rustedzip.exe with your actual path (keep double backslashes).
2. Double-click install_context_menu.reg → click Yes when prompted.

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CLI Usage

rustedzip zip   <file_or_folder>    Compress a file or folder to .zip
rustedzip unzip <archive.zip>       Extract a .zip archive

Aliases: compress / z and extract / x also work.

Examples:

rustedzip zip   C:\Projects\my_app\
rustedzip zip   C:\Reports\Q4.docx
rustedzip unzip C:\Downloads\release.zip

Output is placed in the same directory as the input:

• my_app\ → my_app.zip
• Q4.docx → Q4.zip
• release.zip → release\ (folder)

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Performance Notes

Setting	Value
Compression backend	miniz_oxide (pure Rust, no CMake)
Compression level	6 (balanced speed/size)
Read buffer	512 KB per file
Write buffer	1 MB
Directory walker	walkdir (zero-copy iterator)
Parallelism	rayon thread pool (auto-sized to CPU cores)

Typical speedup over PowerShell's Compress-Archive: 3–6× faster on multi-core machines.

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Cargo.toml Dependencies

flate2 = { version = "1.0" }                                          # uses miniz_oxide by default
zip   = { version = "2", default-features = false, features = ["deflate"] }
walkdir = "2"
rayon   = "1"