Studio ZIP

A VS Code extension to read and write archives directly, without unpacking them first. Clicking a .zip opens a Studio ZIP tab — tree on the left, file preview on the right — and every entry can also be opened as a real editor tab through the zipfs: file system.

Status

The ZIP family reads and writes; everything else reads.

Names that are one of the above under a different extension are routed too — .unitypackage and .crate are gzipped tarballs, .gem is a tar, and .msix/.appx/.aab/.love/.xlsm and friends are ZIPs.

¹ Writing works wherever the whole chain is ZIP. Anything else is read-only: rewriting a .tar.xz means recompressing the entire archive on every save, which is not a reasonable thing to do on Ctrl+S.

Saving rewrites the whole archive — that is what ZIP costs. The replacement is atomic, compression method, mtime and the executable bit survive, and writes against one archive are serialised. Archives with encrypted entries are refused rather than half-written.

Layout

src/
  archive/        Format-agnostic core. Nothing here imports vscode.
    types.ts        ArchiveBackend — the one interface a format implements
    detect.ts       Magic bytes and extension mapping
    registry.ts     Format → backend, resolved lazily
    archiveIndex.ts Directory index, built once per open
    mutations.ts    Plans what a write changes, before any bytes move
    zip/            yauzl reader, yazl writer
    streaming/      Blob (random access over RAM or a spill file) + BlobBackend
    tar/            512-byte header indexer, GNU and PAX extensions
    compress/       gzip/brotli/zstd via Node zlib, xz and bzip2 via libraries
    ar/ cpio/ rpm/  Package containers, each a header parser over a Blob
    libarchive/     7z, RAR, CAB and ISO through one wasm build
  fs/             The zipfs: file system
    archiveUri.ts             URI scheme with a nesting chain
    archiveSessionPool.ts     Shared, ref-counted open archives
    archiveFileSystemProvider.ts
  editor/         The custom editor tab
  webview/        Tree + preview UI (bundled to media/webview.js)
    monacoEditor.ts Monaco, bundled without web workers
    pdfPreview.ts   pdf.js, likewise without a worker
  shared/         Message contract between host and webview
  test/           Runs inside a real VS Code instance
media/
  studio-zip.css  Hand-written, tracked
  webview.js/.css Build output, generated
  codicons/       Copied from node_modules at build time
  pdfjs/          Likewise: pdf.js CMaps, fonts and wasm decoders

Development

npm install
npm run compile      # typecheck + bundle
npm run watch        # or press F5, which runs this as the build task
npm test             # downloads a VS Code build into .vscode-test/

F5 launches an Extension Development Host with the extension loaded. Open any .zip there to see the tab.

Packaging and local install on Code - OSS:

npm run publish
code --install-extension publish/studio-zip-4.0.0.vsix

License

Proprietary, all rights reserved. See the LICENSE file for the terms of use. Third-party components and their licenses are listed in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.