README

Ripper is a flexible tool to extract different types of
files from (uncompressed) archive files.

It can be used, for example, to extract images, audio and
video from computer games and demos.

Compiling
---------

1. get cmake
2. make a `build` subdir and change into it
3. type `cmake ..`
  * alternatively, type `cmake -G "NMake Makefiles" ..`
    or use any other of the predefined generators
4. type `make` (UNIX) or `nmake` (MSVC) to compile


Usage
-----

Simple. Run `ripper -l` to show a list of available
ripper modules (i.e. what filetypes you can rip).

Or run `ripper <filename.ext>` on your datafile to
begin extraction.

Note: At the moment, the file from which you want to 
      rip must not exceed a few hundred megs (on a 32
      bit system) because of a limitation in mmap().

(Technical background: The whole file is mmap()ed into
the process' virtual memory space and this limits the
maximum size of the file. I have an experimental branch
that fixes this but I need to clean it up a bit more
before actually committing it)

Things to note:
- The "plugins" are static only at the moment. No DLLs
  or anything fancy. I prefer to keep it that way, I
  mean it's not that hard to re-compile as a new plugin
  emerges...

- The parallel pattern matching algorithm used is Aho-
  Corasik.

- In case you didn't notice, the source code is GPLv2

- Most of the modules probably have nasty bugs looming

- It is pretty much hand-tailored to little endian sys-
  tems. Probably nothing works on a big endian system.

- although there are some MSVC project files, they are
  old and most probably outdated. So they would need
  some tweaking to get them to run.

- oh and I didn't yet try to build a 64-bit version, so
  that might be broken as well. The modules do have small
  compile-time sanity checks that are tested when the
  program is started, so probably you will notice any
  problems pretty early.

other than that...
...have fun!

(c) 2010 Darkstar