Converting .osm.pbf to .osm - openstreetmap

Question

I am trying to convert a .osm.pbf file to a .osm file.
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Osmosis/Quick_Install_(Windows)
I followed the instructions here:
Installed Java Runtime
Downloaded osmosis and extracted it to a directory
Created a bat file containing "C:\Users\paul\Desktop\osmosis\bin\osmosis.bat"
In a dos command prompt when im in the directory of where the batch file I created is located I try:
osmosis --read-pbf c:\dir\somefile.osm.pbf --write-xml c:\dir\somefile.osm
It just runs really quickly and doesnt convert the file and gives this output:
Nov 24, 2021 4:40:20 PM org.openstreetmap.osmosis.core.Osmosis run
INFO: Osmosis Version 0.48.3
Nov 24, 2021 4:40:22 PM org.openstreetmap.osmosis.core.Osmosis run
INFO: Preparing pipeline.
Nov 24, 2021 4:40:22 PM org.openstreetmap.osmosis.core.Osmosis run
INFO: Launching pipeline execution.
Nov 24, 2021 4:40:22 PM org.openstreetmap.osmosis.core.Osmosis run
INFO: Pipeline executing, waiting for completion.
Nov 24, 2021 4:40:22 PM org.openstreetmap.osmosis.core.Osmosis run
INFO: Pipeline complete.
Nov 24, 2021 4:40:22 PM org.openstreetmap.osmosis.core.Osmosis run
INFO: Total execution time: 2297 milliseconds.

Answer 1

Some sources provide a .osm.bz2 or .osm.zip format which uses standard compression. You can use a program like 7zip to covert those files to a raw .osm file. This format is the easiest to convert to a raw .osm.
However if you need to convert a binary .pbf to a raw .osm I would recommend the tool OSM Convert. Download the large file support version. Unfortunately Osmosis has been unmaintained since September 2018, so try to use newer tools. There is a list of them kept here on the OpenStreetMap Wiki.
With OSM Convert I've used this command with success on Windows 10: osmconvert us-latest.osm.pbf --out-osm -o=us-latest.osm_01.osm to convert us-latest.osm.pbf to us-latest.osm_01.osm