Debigulator

History

One day in 2003 I was backing up my hard drive and thought gee, what I really need is an archive program that compresses a list of files into individual archives. So I did a search for "batch zip programs" and didn't find anything worthwhile. There were some commercial utilities that sort of did what I wanted (all are out of business now) and couple "free" (ad-laden) ones. So I decided to write my own and roughly 30 days later a program called Debigulator was born.

I was fairly happy with the first version of Debigulator, it worked for me but maybe wasn't great for others. Out of nowhere in 2007 I got the itch to revive Debigulator to make it more user-friendly. This resulted in Debigulator 1.1, it's remarkably similar to the original but a tad simpler to navigate.

One random day in 2014 I decided I hated the user interface and rewrote it in JavaFX. Although it looks much nicer it only runs on Java 8+ so both the original version and this fancy new one are available here.


Features


60-Second User Guide

Version 1.1 (Swing) - Java 7 and below
FX Version 1.1 - OpenJDK 11 and above

Version 1.1 (Swing) - Java 7 and below
FX Version 1.1 - OpenJDK 11 and above

Running

Either double-click on the Debigulator .jar file or from a command-line you can run: "java -jar Debigulator_<version>.jar".

Running

Either double-click on the Debigulator .jar file or from a command-line you can run: "java -jar DebigulatorFX.jar".

Select files to archive

In the upper-left pane there are buttons to change the current directory. Select files and use the add buttons to put them in the list of files to archive.

Select files to archive

Use the file browser to navigate to select files. Use the add button to put them in the list of files to archive. Directories will not be added, only files. If someone wants to explain how they would expect adding a directory to function I'd be happy to implement it (it's easy to implement any behavior but very difficult to say how most users would expect it to work).

Remove files

You can remove items in the list of files to archive by selecting them and using the remove button, the remove all button does what you'd expect.

Remove files

You can remove items in the list of files to archive by selecting them and using the remove button (with the minus sign), the remove all button (with the broom) does what you'd expect.

Select the destination directory

Use the buttons in the lower panel to browse for a location. Check the sync to source directory checkbox to make the output directory the same as the current source directory.

Select the destination directory

Use the browse button (with the folder icon) to choose the output location.

Archive options

At this point you can create the archives (next step) unless you want to set some additional options. The archive type list lets you select what type of archives to create, chances are you'll want to stick with 'zip'. The action after archive list lets you select what to do after creating archives. The default is to do nothing. You can change it to verify the archives (which can take a while), delete the source files, or delete the source files after verifying them.

Archive options

At this point you can create the archives (next step) unless you want to set some additional options. The archive type list lets you select what type of archives to create, chances are you'll want to stick with 'zip'. 7zip support is experimental so you might be best to avoid it,. The action after archive list lets you select what to do after creating archives. The default is to do nothing. You can change it to verify the archives (which can take a while), delete the source files, or delete the source files after verifying them.

Advanced options

Press either of the advanced settings buttons to launch the advanced settings dialog. From the advanced settings dialog you can configure the following: Automatically save current session on exit - fairly self-explanatory. Append archive names with date - add the date to the name of output archives, useful if you're regularly backing-up files that change often. Append archive names with original extension - adds the extension to the output file, useful if you're backing-up files with the same name or something. Enable debug logs - probably only useful to someone modifying the program.

Advanced options

Checking append archive names with date adds the date to the name of output archives, useful if you're regularly backing-up files that change often and want to sort by name that way. Checking append archive names with original extension adds the extension to the output file, useful if you're backing-up files with the same name or something.

Archive files

Click either of the run buttons to start creating archives. A progress dialog will display, click OK when it's done.

Archive files

Click the Create Archives button to start creating archives. A progress dialog will display and close automatically when it's done.

Save session

If you're going to run the same backup job a lot you can save & load the session from the top toolbar. The saved session contains all the files and settings you've selected.

Save session

If you're going to run the same backup job a lot you can save & load the session from the top toolbar. The saved session contains all the files and settings you've selected.


Download

DebigulatorFX: Executable jar file (OpenJDK 11+)

Debigulator 1.1: Executable jar file (Java 7 and below)

Source code for both versions is available on GitHub.


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