Android still doesn't support many compression types

ladfrombrad , 3 days ago

I keep pondering why Android has blobs for CIFS/SMB but not NFS, too.

Still haven’t found a legit reason why.

woelkchen , 2 days ago

Because Windows is omnipresent and every NAS comes with SMB support out of the box.

zelnix , 2 days ago

NFS is shit anyway. It has no proper security unless you want to set up something like Kerberos (a major PITA)

ladfrombrad , 2 days ago

Yeah no doubt, and that’s why I like Tailscale.

I just map all users Tailnet visitors to guest, and give me r/w and all others r/o.

Bugs me though that they could include it, with big red flashy warnings like you get enabling USB debugging.

TheGrandNagus , 3 days ago (edited 3 days ago)

Google wants you to handle all your storage needs through Drive and Google Photos, where they are in control, can scrape more data, train models on your photos, and push you onto paid storage plans.

I can’t really see the benefit to Google in having an excellent local file manager with wide archive-file support. It doesn’t profit them in any way that I can think of.

Thankfully the workaround isn’t too bad, just installing an alternative file manager.

9point6 , 3 days ago

People don’t tend to need to browse local archive formats on their phones I guess, and if they do, they’ll have a file manager app with support.

There’s support for some formats if your files are in cloud storage like Google drive, which is a more likely use case for phone users

ByteMe OP , 3 days ago

I’m using a Samsung tablet that doesn’t support rar for example.

9point6 , 3 days ago

I suppose you’d fall into my “you’d install a file manager app if you actually needed it” category

ByteMe OP , 3 days ago

Yeah but it’s still weird that there is no native support

9point6 , 3 days ago

I think a big part of it for RAR specifically is that it’s a proprietary format that would technically require Google to license it, and for the tiny percentage of users that would benefit, they don’t bother.

A seemingly random but relevant example is the Japanese travel card situation with Pixel phones—every pixel on the planet has the necessary hardware to support Japanese travel cards since the pixel 6, however only pixel phones bought in Japan can use the feature (locked by the OS) because it would mean Google would have to pay a per-device cost worldwide.

This is kinda a similar situation I’d bet, they’ve proven they would rather not include the feature than pay for licensing

woelkchen , 3 days ago

I think a big part of it for RAR specifically is that it’s a proprietary format that would technically require Google to license it

Unrar is free enough.

9point6 , 3 days ago

And there’s not really any money to be made charging licenses to open source projects—see ffmpeg/vlc

Google including it in android though means they can charge licenses as a per unit fee because, basically, Google (or phone manufacturers) is a company with money.

woelkchen , 2 days ago

Google including it in android though means they can charge licenses as a per unit fee because, basically, Google (or phone manufacturers) is a company with money.

What? This has literally nothing to do with unrar’s license terms.

9point6 , 2 days ago

We’re talking about Android, unrar doesn’t have anything to do with this really.

RAR is and will continue to be a proprietary format with an owner who can seek royalties.

It’s like saying Google should stop licensing MPEG because ffmpeg exists—it simply doesn’t work like that

woelkchen , 2 days ago (edited 2 days ago)

We’re talking about Android, unrar doesn’t have anything to do with this really.

The entire topic is about RAR archive support on Android, so of course the freely available source code of unrar, released by the RAR developer himself, has absolutely to do with everything here.

RAR is and will continue to be a proprietary format with an owner who can seek royalties.

Nope, unrar’s source code is free, released by RAR’s developer.

It’s like saying Google should stop licensing MPEG because ffmpeg exists—it simply doesn’t work like that

Nope, it absolutely isn’t like that. You just have no clue at all.

<span style="color:#323232;">   Unrar source may be used in any software to handle RAR archives
</span><span style="color:#323232;">   without limitations free of charge, but cannot be used to re-create
</span><span style="color:#323232;">   the RAR compression algorithm, which is proprietary. Distribution
</span><span style="color:#323232;">   of modified Unrar source in separate form or as a part of other
</span><span style="color:#323232;">   software is permitted, provided that it is clearly stated in
</span><span style="color:#323232;">   the documentation and source comments that the code may not be used
</span><span style="color:#323232;">   to develop a RAR (WinRAR) compatible archiver.
</span>

It’s not FOSS, given that it comes with the provision that no RAR compressor can be created based on unrar source code but for browsing and extracting RAR archives, the unrar source code as is is absolutely fine.

9point6 , 2 days ago

Ah fair play, I didn’t realise unrar was from the same guy, cheers for the extra context.

So I guess we go back to what else it could be:

• The licence could still be an issue as it’s not FOSS and parts of android are, so I guess that could prevent its inclusion if it’s incompatible with existing licences
• The licence could also be an issue in terms of wanting feature parity with zip support, which would include creation of archives.
• As I mentioned before, the percentage of users who are interacting with non-zip archives locally on their devices is a pretty small percentage. It may be on the backlog, but it’s not going to be far from the bottom in priority.
• How many of the use cases are not served by the third party app ecosystem sufficiently that it would benefit inclusion in the actual OS and the extra maintenance that would entail
• RAR is an outdated format and in decline at this point, there are better options to add before getting to it
• Let’s also address the elephant in the room regarding the last point—I don’t think I’ve seen RARs used regularly outside of piracy in quite some time. If that’s the main use case, Google is not going to be bothered about supporting it.

There’s probably other reasons I’ve not thought of, but just a couple of the above are enough to explain it IMO

Ephera , 3 days ago

Google isn’t exactly excited about the concept of local files. They would prefer you to keep everything in their online services.

If you need support for these, then installing a separate file manager app is your best bet.
I’m using this one: f-droid.org/packages/me.zhanghai.android.files/
(No idea, though, if it supports unpacking RAR archives.)