Tarball

Tarball

A tarball is a type of archive file that is used to store multiple files together in a single file, often for the purpose of distribution or backup. The term "tarball" is derived from the file format used to create these archives, known as tar (short for "tape archive"). Tarballs are commonly used in Unix and Unix-like operating systems, including Linux.

Overview

A tarball is created using the `tar` command, which stands for "tape archive." The `tar` command was originally developed to write data to sequential I/O devices such as tape drives, but it is now widely used for creating and manipulating archive files on disk.

Tarballs typically have the file extension `.tar`. However, they are often compressed to reduce their size, in which case they may have extensions such as `.tar.gz`, `.tar.bz2`, or `.tar.xz`, indicating the compression algorithm used:

- .tar.gz: A tarball compressed with the gzip compression algorithm. - .tar.bz2: A tarball compressed with the bzip2 compression algorithm. - .tar.xz: A tarball compressed with the xz compression algorithm.

Creating a Tarball

To create a tarball, the `tar` command is used with the `-c` (create) option. For example, to create a tarball named `archive.tar` containing the files `file1.txt` and `file2.txt`, the following command can be used:

``` tar -cvf archive.tar file1.txt file2.txt ```

- -c: Create a new archive. - -v: Verbosely list files processed. - -f: Specify the filename of the archive.

Extracting a Tarball

To extract the contents of a tarball, the `tar` command is used with the `-x` (extract) option. For example, to extract the contents of `archive.tar`, the following command can be used:

``` tar -xvf archive.tar ```

- -x: Extract files from an archive.

Compression

Tarballs are often compressed to save space. The `tar` command can be combined with compression utilities to create compressed tarballs. For example:

- To create a gzip-compressed tarball:

 ```
 tar -cvzf archive.tar.gz file1.txt file2.txt
 ```
 - -z: Filter the archive through `gzip`.

- To create a bzip2-compressed tarball:

 ```
 tar -cvjf archive.tar.bz2 file1.txt file2.txt
 ```
 - -j: Filter the archive through `bzip2`.

- To create an xz-compressed tarball:

 ```
 tar -cvJf archive.tar.xz file1.txt file2.txt
 ```
 - -J: Filter the archive through `xz`.

Usage in Software Distribution

Tarballs are commonly used to distribute software packages in Unix-like systems. Source code for open-source software is often distributed as a tarball, which users can download, extract, and compile on their systems.

Also see

- Compression algorithms - File archiver - GNU tar - Unix-like operating system