unpack_macbinary

This tool provides a helper to convert files from MacBinary format into native Mac HFS+ files.

Mac OS's HFS and HFS+ filesystems has a concept of file "forks"; each file has both a data fork, which contains arbitrary binary data like on other filesystems, and a resource fork, which contains structured data in a Mac OS-specific format. The MacBinary format is a format designed to bundle files with both data and resource forks in a format which can be losslessly transferred to other filesystems; it was most widely used in the 1990s.

However, if a Mac user should receive a MacBinary file, it's not straightforward to convert that file back into a native Mac OS file. This tool simplifies the process of turning a MacBinary file into a native Mac file by wrapping a tool from the macutils package.

To run this, you'll need macutils to be installed. If you use Homebrew, you can:

$ brew install mistydemeo/formulae/macutils

Then install the gem using:

$ gem install unpack_macbinary

Note that, because this produces native Mac OS files, you can only use this tool on OS X.

Just provide this tool the names of the files to unpack:

$ unpack_macbinary first.bin second.bin third.bin

The MacBinary files should all have filenames ending in ".bin". The processed output file will be named the same as the input file, except without the file extension.

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install. To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb, and then run bundle exec rake release, which will create a git tag for the version, push git commits and tags, and push the .gem file to rubygems.org.

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/[USERNAME]/unpack_macbinary. This project is intended to be a safe, welcoming space for collaboration, and contributors are expected to adhere to the Contributor Covenant code of conduct.

unpack_macbinary is licensed using the Kindest Public License. See LICENSE for usage details.