MC-Repack
A repacking tool for Minecraft mods and resource packs to optimize size and loading speed.
Features
- Minifying JSON files, using
serde-json, and removing comments - Optimizing PNG files, using
oxipng - Optimizing TOML files, using
toml - Removing unwanted files – some project files (from Blender, Photoshop, etc.) are mistakenly packed in mods. This operation will detect and remove (ignore while repacking) these files.
- Stripping Unicode BOM
- Removing comment lines in many file types:
.cfg, .obj, .mtl, .zs, .vsh, .fsh - Recompressing files more efficiently
Comparison table
These mods are tested and repacked by MC-Repack with the following results:
| File name | Original | Optimized |
|---|---|---|
| minecolonies-1.19.2-1.0.1247-BETA.jar | 72.8 MB | 63.7 MB |
| twilightforest-1.19.3-4.2.1549-universal.jar | 22.5 MB | 21.9 MB |
| TConstruct-1.18.2-3.6.3.111.jar | 15.2 MB | 14.0 MB |
| BloodMagic-1.18.2-3.2.6-41.jar | 13.6 MB | 11.9 MB |
| create-1.19.2-0.5.0.i.jar | 13.1 MB | 12.8 MB |
| Botania-1.19.2-437-FORGE.jar | 10.9 MB | 10.1 MB |
| ImmersiveEngineering-1.19.3-9.3.0-163.jar | 10.3 MB | 10.0 MB |
| thermal_foundation-1.19.2-10.2.0.47.jar | 4.58 MB | 4.38 MB |
| cfm-7.0.0-pre35-1.19.3.jar | 2.11 MB | 1.92 MB |
Installation
Currently the only way to get this app is to use Cargo:
If you want to test the latest version directly from this repo:
Usage
After installation, the tool can be used by typing the following command:
|When a file path is provided, then MC-Repack will repack the file contents (adds $repack on new archive). If a path is a directory, then all files inside (non-recursive) will be repacked.
More options are provided by typing mc-repack --help in a shell/terminal.
Library
MC-Repack can be also purposed for creating your own version of a repacking tool. See Rust Docs for more technical details.
Why?
MC-Repack is meant to show how many Minecraft mods and resource packs come with unoptimized files (and I don't mean just pretty-printed JSON files). You will be surprised that in some cases a PNG file's metadata added by Photoshop is much larger than its content.
One other inportant thing is that MC-Repack determines if a file really needs to be compressed. Most PNG files and smaller JSON files will usually be stored uncompressed. This kind of operation saves bytes if a "compressed" form is larger than original. Also, uncompressed data can be loaded faster.
This is a great tool that can be helpful for:
- Mod developers and resource pack makers – they can provide mods with smaller file sizes, optimized PNGs and correctly formatted JSONs
- Players and server owners – optimized and repacked files can speed up Minecraft load time while using less memory.
MC-Repack shows all errors happened during repacking. Most of them are errors that can be simply ignored (like trailing comma at line X column Y).
How to contribute?
The easiest way to contribute is to share this with others on social media.
There is a lot of things that should be fixed or optimized. New feature ideas are welcome, just file an issue.
Can I use it outside Minecraft?
Sure! The tool does not recognize that an archive is not a Minecraft mod nor a resource pack (yet).
Future plans
- Aggresive mode – minify JavaScript and shader files (potentially breaking debugging).
- Strip unwanted data in JSON files