Command line¶

The livezip console script packs local files, or streams a bucket of DEFLATE objects, into a ZIP64 archive. It is a thin wrapper over the library, useful for smoke-testing and for one-off jobs.

livezip --help

flowchart TD
    A["livezip ..."] --> B{"--s3-bucket set?"}
    B -- no --> C["local files<br/>-m store or deflate"]
    B -- yes --> D["S3 DEFLATE objects<br/>list + head"]
    C --> E["ZipEncoder.prepare()"]
    D --> E
    E --> F{"-o is -?"}
    F -- yes --> G["archive to stdout"]
    F -- no --> H["archive to file<br/>-f to overwrite"]

Synopsis¶

livezip [-h] [--version] [-o OUTPUT] [-f] [-c COMMENT] [-m {store,deflate}]
        [--s3-bucket BUCKET] [--s3-prefix PREFIX]
        [--s3-endpoint-url URL] [--s3-region REGION]
        [FILES ...]

Options¶

Option	Default	Meaning
`-o`, `--output`	`-` (stdout)	Destination file, or `-` for stdout.
`-f`, `--force`	off	Overwrite an existing output file.
`-c`, `--comment`	`""`	Archive-level comment.
`-m`, `--method`	`deflate`	Storage method for local files: `store` or `deflate`.
`--s3-bucket`	—	Enables S3 mode; read objects from this bucket.
`--s3-prefix`	`""`	Restrict S3 mode to keys starting with this prefix.
`--s3-endpoint-url`	—	Custom S3 endpoint (SeaweedFS, MinIO, ...).
`--s3-region`	—	AWS region name.
`FILES ...`	—	Local files to pack. Ignored in S3 mode.

Local mode¶

livezip -o archive.zip photo.jpg video.mp4 notes.txt
livezip -m store -o raw.zip blob.bin
livezip -c "nightly export" -o export.zip data/*.csv

Entry names keep their path relative to the current working directory; files outside it fall back to their base name, so archives never contain absolute paths.

S3 mode¶

livezip --s3-bucket my-logs --s3-prefix 2026/ -o logs.zip

In S3 mode the positional FILES are ignored (a warning is printed if any are given). Each object must carry the metadata described in Streaming from S3.

Streaming to stdout¶

When -o is - (the default), progress goes to stderr and the archive goes to stdout, so it composes cleanly:

livezip --s3-bucket my-logs --s3-prefix 2026/ > logs.zip
livezip --s3-bucket my-logs | ssh backup@host 'cat > logs.zip'
livezip -o - file.bin | curl -T - https://example.com/upload

Exit codes¶

Code	Meaning
`0`	Success.
`1`	A handled error (missing input, would overwrite, S3 metadata missing, ...).
`2`	Argument parsing error (from `argparse`).

Progress output¶

Everything the tool reports is written to stderr, and looks like:

livezip: prepared 3 file(s), archive size is 14241 bytes

The size is computed before any file is read — the same guarantee the library makes.