Command line utility lacks `update` command

[navid-zamani]

Right now, when I want to patch a single file in an archive, I have to unpack the entire archive, patch the file, and then pack it again. This takes an unreasonable amount of time.

Most tools have an update command, to allows one to save all but the necessary work. E.g. ar already has this, as do tar (with compression too) and zip.

It would be nice, if asar had this too, if it is easy to implement and not a lot of work, and if it doesn’t extract the archive internally anyway and saves time/resources.

Here’s my use case, which changes the key mapping in Signal Desktop’s asar file:

npx asar extract "$asar" "$tmp"
sed -ri 's/key:( *)13,/key:\113,\1ctrlKey:\1true,/g' \
    "$tmp/ts/components/CompositionInput.js" \
    "$tmp/preload.bundle.js"
sed -ri 's/\*in//g' \
    "$tmp/_locales/de/messages.json"
npx asar pack "$tmp" "$geheilt"
rm -rf "$tmp"

[MarshallOfSound]

This is not an intended / supported usecase of the asar command, we're a file format used by developers not by end users who wish to modify other ASARs. As you note it's currently possible, but we probably won't invest any resources in making it easier via an update command or the like.

[L1lith]

Hello @navid-zamani, I have created a package to do exactly this. I hope it is useful to you or others who come across this issue.

https://www.npmjs.com/package/patch-asar