buildtorrent is a simple command-line .torrent file creation tool.

buildtorrent 0.8 (2010-01-31) comfy chair

Changes since buildtorrent 0.7 (2008-04-13):

Fixed bugs:

• announce-list segfault on 64bit

New features:

• webseed url-list (-w)
• piece length as a power of 2 (-L)
• torrent name (-n)
• external file list (-f)

New homepage:

• http://claudiusmaximus.goto10.org/cm/torrent.html

New repository:

• http://gitorious.org/buildtorrent

The transition from 0.7 to 0.8 involved some extensive code reorganisation to make it possible to add the new features: as with any such extensive change, this may have introduced new bugs. If you find a bug, please report it.

Download the release tarball: buildtorrent-0.8.tar.gz

Checksums:

3bba072cc89d2b8b4198c85734e39302 *buildtorrent-0.8.tar.gz
32694478ddef91453dc85ab7a2e659132adadeb6 *buildtorrent-0.8.tar.gz

Manual page:

Synopsis

buildtorrent [OPTIONS] -a announceurl input output

buildtorrent [OPTIONS] -a announceurl -f filelist -n name output

Description

buildtorrent is a torrent file creation program. Given an announce url and an input file or directory, buildtorrent generates an output .torrent file that can be used by torrent clients.

Options

-a announce, --announce=url

Announce URL (required).

-f filelist, --filelist=filelist

A text file (or - for standard input) containing a list of files to add to the output torrent file, together with the path to use inside the torrent. One file is given per line, use / as path separator for the torrent path, use | to separate the filesystem path from the torrent path. Backslash \ can be used to escape newlines and | characters inside names. For example:

/data/files/linux.iso|bin/linux.iso
/data/files/linux.txt|doc/linux.txt

Using this option requires that the --name option be used.

-n name, --name=name

Specify the name for the torrent. Usage of this option is required when the --filelist option is used, in which case it specifies the name of the torrent directory. Usage without a file list overrides the name of the directory or file given on the command line.

-A announces, --announcelist=announces

Additional announce URL list. Use , to separate outer level lists, and | to separate inner level items; for example:

a,b1|b2,c

-w webseeds, --webseeds=webseeds

Additional WebSeed URL list. Use , to separate items; for example:

a,b,c

-l length, --piecelength=length

Piece length in bytes (default 262144).

-L size, --piecesize=size

Use 2^size as piece length in bytes (default 18) (overrides -l).

-c comment, --comment=comment

User comment (omitted by default).

-p private, --private=private

Private flag (either 0 or 1).

-D, --nodate

Omit the creation date field.

-C, --nocreator

Omit the created by field.

-m, --md5sum

Add an md5sum field for each file.

-s, --show

Show generated torrent structure.

-S, --showall

Show generated torrent structure, including piece data.

-q, --quiet

Quiet operation with reduced output.

-V, --version

Show the version string.

-h, --help

Show a help screen with brief usage information.

See also

• createtorrent
• mktorrent
• http://wiki.theory.org/BitTorrentSpecification
• http://bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0012.html
• http://www.getright.com/seedtorrent.html

Feature comparison matrix:

buildtorrent is more flexible, especially with the external file list feature, but mktorrent's threaded hashing wins if you want to exploit multi-core CPUs.

buildtorrent used to have its own page, but that part of this website has been dismantled, so here is the content that was previously available:

Synopsis

buildtorrent [OPTIONS] -a announceurl input output

Description

buildtorrent is a torrent file creation program. Given an announce url and an input file or directory, buildtorrent generates an output .torrent file that can be used by torrent clients.

Options

-a announce, --announce=url

Announce URL (required).

-A announces, --announcelist=announces

Additional announce URL list.

-l length, --piecelength=length

Piece length in bytes (default 262144).

-c comment, --comment=comment

User comment (omitted by default).

-p private, --private=private

Private flag (either 0 or 1).

-D, --nodate

Omit the creation date field.

-C, --nocreator

Omit the created by field.

-m, --md5sum

Add an md5sum field for each file.

-s, --show

Show generated torrent structure.

-S, --showall

Show generated torrent structure, including piece data.

-q, --quiet

Quiet operation with reduced output.

-V, --version

Show the version string.

-h, --help

Show a help screen with brief usage information.

See also

• http://wiki.theory.org/BitTorrentSpecification

The above is the manual page from the buildtorrent-0.7.2 source tarball, double-check your local buildtorrent package for the manual corresponding to the version you have.

Some new news now: progress on the 0.8 release of buildtorrent is very slow, as I have too many other things I prefer to spend my time on. The roadmap is roughly:

0.8

implement the already-documented file list feature

0.9

fix all remaining bugs

1.0

final release

2.0

go crazy with all kinds of freaky features

Hopefully 1.0 will get finished by the end of the decade. Jan Stępień sent me (a couple of months ago...) a patch for multi-threaded hashing, but I didn't have a multi-core machine at the time - expect that as an optional configure-time switch in Subversion as soon as I've had time to test it.

The freaky features I have in mind for 2.0 include distributed .torrent creation within a trusted swarm for later publication to an untrusted swarm. It should allow torrents to be created when not all the files are local without transferring large amounts of data.

You can get the development version of buildtorrent here:

svn co https://code.goto10.org/svn/maximus/buildtorrent buildtorrent

buildtorrent is a simple command-line .torrent file creation tool.

Bug fixes in buildtorrent-0.7:

• Handle empty files better.
• No more badly formatted error messages.
• Don't crash on nonsense piece length.

Download the release tarball: buildtorrent-0.7-1.tar.gz

Or check out the development sources from SVN:

svn checkout https://code.goto10.org/svn/maximus/buildtorrent buildtorrent

buildtorrent is a simple command-line .torrent file creation tool.

New features in buildtorrent-0.6:

• Autoconf build system (the usual ./configure && make && make install).
• Manual page (so you can get useful information using man buildtorrent).

Download the release tarball: buildtorrent-0.6-1.tar.gz

Or check out the development sources from SVN:

svn checkout https://code.goto10.org/svn/maximus/buildtorrent buildtorrent

New features in buildtorrent:

• Large file support (can now create torrents for files/directories larger than 2GB).
• Hashing progress bar (neat display instead of reams of dots).

Check out the development sources from the Subversion repository:

svn co https://code.goto10.org/svn/maximus/buildtorrent buildtorrent

Previously buildtorrent would only work on files and directories in the current directory, and moreover would generate bad .torrent files if you gave a directory name with a trailing '/'. These bugs have now been fixed. Some tests (all should work and generate good .torrent files):

buildtorrent -a http://www.example.com/announce directory output.torrent
buildtorrent -a http://www.example.com/announce directory/ output.torrent
buildtorrent -a http://www.example.com/announce /path/to/directory output.torrent
buildtorrent -a http://www.example.com/announce /path/to/directory/ output.torrent
buildtorrent -a http://www.example.com/announce file output.torrent
buildtorrent -a http://www.example.com/announce /path/to/file output.torrent

Check out the current development sources from the Subversion repository:

svn co https://code.goto10.org/svn/maximus/buildtorrent buildtorrent

I released a new version of buildtorrent, a replacement for createtorrent without the bugs that made it unusable. It is feature-complete with respect to the BitTorrent metainfo specfication.

Usage: buildtorrent [OPTIONS] -a announceurl input output

options:
--announce      -a  <announce>   : announce url (required)
--announcelist  -A  <announces>  : announce url list
--piecelength   -l  <length>     : piece length in bytes, default 262144
--comment       -c  <comment>    : user comment, omitted by default
--private       -p  <private>    : private flag, either 0 or 1
--nodate        -D               : omit 'creation date' field
--nocreator     -C               : omit 'created by' field
--md5sum        -m               : add an 'md5sum' field for each file
--show          -s               : show generated torrent structure
--showall       -S               : show pieces too (implies '-s')
--quiet         -q               : quiet operation
--version       -V               : show version of buildtorrent
--help          -h               : show this help screen

Changes in this version:

• Single-file mode.
• Support for optional fields:
  • created by
  • creation date
  • comment
  • private
  • md5sum
  • announce-list
• Pretty-printing of generated torrent file (mainly useful for debugging).
• Quiet operation if requested.
• Better error messages.

Still to do:

• Large-file support (above 4GB currently won't work, above 2GB untested).

I was looking for a simple command line torrent file making program, and createtorrent seemed just the ticket, except that it didn't work (namely, the directory support was broken completely in every version I tried). So I decided to write my own. Hence buildtorrent.

Features are somewhat limited so far, and I haven't done any testing beyond checking that the torrent files created by buildtorrent load correctly in ktorrent with the files on disk passing the piece hash checks, but it seems to work satisfactorily.

Here's what it can do:

• Create a torrent from a directory.
• Can choose the tracker announce url.
• Can choose the piece size.
• Written in ANSI C without requiring any special libraries.

Here's what still needs to be added or fixed:

• Create a torrent from a single file.
• Adding more metadata to the torrent (user comment, creation date, etc).
• There are two warnings during compilation.
• More testing.
• Better error reporting.
• Become valgrind-pure.
• Add large-file (and large-torrent) support.
• Check 64bit support, check big endian systems.
• More thorough documentation.

Here's where you can get the current development version (no release versions yet):

• svn checkout https://code.goto10.org/svn/maximus/buildtorrent buildtorrent

Code based almost entirely on the BitTorrent Metainfo Specification, with some ideas from createtorrent (but not many).