I have a problem with a tool that does not correctly name its files. The "Composer" tool for PHP dependency management manages a cache where archives are sometimes called ".tar" when in fact they are ".tgz" files.
Is there a way to make the .tar/.gz VFS plugin work with these files (e.g serach in archives) despite the wrong name?
PS: I ask this here because I think that leo might be the best source of information on this. g
No, if the .tar extension is incorrect then the archives plugin won't open the archive.
Why not ask the makers of the tool to use the correct extension instead?
I first wanted to know if there is a way to force-feed the filetype into the plugin or if it should have worked out of the box. After all, Opus is known for recognizing files by their characteristics and not only by filename extension. Detecting a .tar files a gzipped would be easy (file starts with 0x1f 0x8b in the first two bytes).
It's unlikely to happen with the archives plugin. It is designed around file extensions and it needs to know the type before the file is opened. (Opening the file an extra time to check if the extension is wrong slows things down, although we do do that for image files which are often mis-named.)
When opening the archive manually (to browse inside it, not via search function), I get a message box telling me that the file cannot be opened. Displaying this and then creating a copy of the file to rename it sure slows me down more than Opus recognizing the file, opening it anyway and perhaps informing me about the type mismatch in non-modal form (in the top of the folder pane, like when folder lock gets out of sync). G
Just to inform you: I have already submitted an issue for the Composer program (https://github.com/composer/composer/issues/2380).
Sure, but I am not going to spend a week re-architecting & re-testing the plugin and slowing down every archive operation for everyone else, just to speed up a case caused by another tool using the wrong extension. That wouldn't make sense. 
This was no a feature request but a question if I could somehow trick the plugin into doing the wrong thing. g
Conside this thread done. I was able to perform my search using flat view, copy and mass rename. Using the swiss army knive that Opus is it wasn't THAT difficult to navigate aound the problems.