r/programming • • 6d ago

Arcana: One Pure-Java Library for (Almost) Every Archive Format

https://ibb.co/zVgQqB48
0 Upvotes

9 comments sorted by

10

u/dstutz 5d ago

How much did LLM write?

10

u/frankster 5d ago

In the old days, a nice graphic like that would indicate a project that was well-curated, that had had a lot of effort put into it.

These days, it is highly indicative of AI slop with no long term maintenance!

3

u/SocialMemeWarrior 5d ago

Looks like most of it based on writing conventions in JavaDoc I've seen both current Claude and GPT (But moreso Claude, GPT is generally worse at writing javadocs) when writing greenfield Java projects.

  • Paragraphs wrapped in <p> and redundant </p> at the end

  • Frequent ; usage

  • Single line javadoc form on members, skipping @param or @return usage.

  • Line spanning "section header" comments

    • Varying styles of this, see LhaCompressor.java for single line form and GzipCompressor.java for multi-line form

Patterns are in basically every class I check.

1

u/SteF44444 5d ago

Hi,

I'm RealBurst, the coder of Arcana.

First of all, excuse my poor english, I'm from belgium and I speak french.

The code was mainly coded by me, and of course I used IA for :
- find technical documentation about differents archives format
- help debugging the code (the most difficult for me was RAR5 format)
- check my code for security issue
- generate java doc
- as I'm not a graphist I also asked it to design the picture of this page.

The Arcana project is the continuation of Unrar5J, the first open source RAR5 unpacker and I coded it myself without IA. It take me many months and very long nights of coding and debugging.
I don't have enough money to pay 299 € per month for an IA. Do you ?

But it's a matter of fact that now, everybody use IA, also Linus Torvad with the Linux kernel.
Do you use linux ? Did you plan to stop using it because a part of the kernel was coded with the help of Claude or aother LLM ?

Packing and unpacking files are extremely difficult algorithms, especially with RAR5 and some others formats, do you really think that an IA can generate code to do that ? Of course no, It will be crappy.
Can I suggest you to try with Claude or ChatGPT (or whatever you want) to make code to unpack any Rar5 archive ? You will show by yourself.

Finally, keep in mind that this project is open sourced, I don't ask any money for it.

Regards,
RealBurst (alias SteF)

1

u/audioen 3d ago edited 3d ago

I happen to be looking for pure-java zstd that doesn't suck. Do you implement all the zstd levels?

Edit: oh right, you're decompressor only. No compressor at all. Never mind.

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4

u/oweiler 5d ago

Remember when we had libraries that where focused, did a single thing well and were a labour of love?

3

u/devraj7 5d ago

We still have those. And we also have all encompassing libraries for different scenarios.

They all have a place.

1

u/suitable_character 3d ago

You mean the left-pad library?