ancient ☆

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Description:
Decompression routines for ancient formats

Type: Formula | Latest Version: 2.3.0@0 | Tracked Since: Dec 17, 2025

Links: Homepage | formulae.brew.sh

Category: Developer tools

Tags: compression legacy library archives c++

Install: brew install ancient

About:
Ancient is a C++ library that provides decompression routines for a wide variety of ancient and obsolete data compression formats. It supports formats like LHA, ARC, and PKPAK, enabling developers to integrate legacy format support into modern applications. The library is designed for robustness and efficiency, making it ideal for archival and data recovery tools.

Key Features:

Supports dozens of legacy compression formats (LHA, ARC, PKZIP, etc.)
C++ library with a clean, object-oriented API
Designed for high performance and low memory overhead
Actively maintained and portable across platforms

Use Cases:

Building archival software that needs to read old backup files
Digital preservation and data recovery projects
Game engine development for handling legacy asset archives

Alternatives:

libarchive – libarchive is a more modern and comprehensive library that supports a wider range of modern formats, whereas Ancient specializes specifically in older, more obscure formats.

License: BSD-2-Clause

Bottles available for: arm64_tahoe, arm64_sequoia, arm64_sonoma, sonoma, arm64_linux, x86_64_linux

Version History

Detected	Version	Rev	Change	Commit
Sep 11, 2025 9:11am		0	VERSION_BUMP	b251370e
Nov 17, 2024 4:39pm		0	VERSION_BUMP	e89d7f32