---
id: zip-files
version: "0.4.1"
license: BSD license
license_treatment: permissive
maintenance: abandoned
---

# zip-files — Command line utilities for creating zip files

License: permissive · Maintenance: abandoned · Downloads: 98.8K/mo

## What it is and what it does

zip-files is a command-line utility package that wraps Python's zip functionality to make it easy to create zip archives with custom root folder names and compression options. It provides two main commands: `zip-files` to bundle individual files from multiple locations into a single archive, and `zip-folder` to compress an entire directory tree. The package depends only on click for CLI argument handling.

The tool is designed for common tasks like packaging documentation for release or assembling files from scattered locations for distribution. It supports multiple compression methods (stored, deflated, bzip2, lzma), glob-pattern exclusions, version control system filtering, and .gitignore processing. However, the package has been abandoned since 2021-04-21 with no maintenance or updates since then.

Use it for:

- Package Sphinx documentation builds as versioned zip archives during Python package releases
- Bundle scattered report files and plots from different directories into a single email-ready archive
- Create deployable zip files with custom root folder names for distribution
- Exclude version control files and dotfiles from archives using command-line flags
- Apply different compression methods to reduce archive size for specific use cases

## Worth the install?

AI-flagged interpretation of the facts above — verify before relying.

Provides command-line tools to create zip files with arbitrary root folder names and compression methods, bundling files and directories from different filesystem locations.

No. While the package is lightweight and permissive-licensed, it has been abandoned since 2021-04-21 with no maintenance, no security updates, and no active development. For command-line zip creation, use Python's built-in zipfile module directly or consider actively maintained alternatives. The lack of maintenance poses a risk if bugs or compatibility issues arise.

## Install

pip install zip-files
uv add zip-files
poetry add zip-files

## Installing zip-files

Before you install: Low install friction with a single lightweight dependency (click). However, the package is abandoned—last release was 2021-04-21 and no commits since then. It will not receive maintenance or security updates.

License in practice: BSD license is permissive and places minimal restrictions on use, modification, and distribution.

Quickstart:

pip install zip_files
zip-folder --auto-root --outfile docs.zip ./docs
zip-files -o archive.zip ./file1.txt ./file2.txt

Verify before relying:

- Whether the package works reliably with Python versions beyond 3.9
- Whether all compression methods (stored, deflated, bzip2, lzma) are fully functional

## Package facts

- License: BSD license (permissive)
- Python support: supports_current
- Install friction: low
- Maintenance: abandoned
- Downloads: 98.8K/month (top 15,000 on PyPI)
- Known vulnerabilities: none known

## Tags

command line zip creation, zip files from command line, create zip archives cli, zip folder utility, batch zip tool, zip with custom root folder, compress files to zip, cli-tool, abandoned

[View on SkillFed](https://skillfed.io/packages/zip-files) · [View on PyPI](https://pypi.org/project/zip-files/)