🗃️ Aaru 6.0.0 Alpha 12: Expanding the Archive Horizon

We’re thrilled to announce the release of Aaru 6.0.0 alpha 12, now available for testing and exploration.

This release marks a significant step forward in our mission to preserve digital history. True to Aaru’s philosophy, we continue to prioritize format diversity over popularity, ensuring that even the most obscure archival formats remain accessible to researchers, hobbyists, and digital archaeologists.

✨ New Archive Format Support

In this alpha, we’ve introduced decompression support for several historically significant and technically fascinating archive formats:

• ZOO — A nostalgic blast from the past, ZOO was once a staple in the Unix world.
• ARC — The progenitor of the compressed archive era, ARC laid the groundwork for many formats that followed.
• PAK — A direct competitor to ARC, PAK carved its own niche in early DOS ecosystems.
• HA — Harri Hirvola’s high-compression format, notable for its unique algorithmic approach.
• AMG — A rare format with limited documentation, now brought back to life through Aaru’s forensic lens.
• STFS (Secure Transacted File System) — Widely used in Xbox 360 content distribution, STFS support opens up access to countless demos, games, and downloadable content.

🔍 Why It Matters

Every format we support is a doorway to a different era of computing. Whether it’s recovering forgotten shareware, analyzing game assets, or simply exploring the evolution of compression, Aaru aims to be the Swiss Army knife of digital preservation.

We’re excited about what 6.0.0 is shaping up to become—and even more excited about what’s coming next. If you’re as passionate about preserving computing history as we are, we invite you to try out this release and share your feedback.

Stay tuned. The archive frontier is vast—and we’re just getting started.