Archive::Tar::Wrapper - API wrapper around the 'tar' utility

    use Archive::Tar::Wrapper;

    my $arch = Archive::Tar::Wrapper->new();

    # Open a tarball, expand it into a temporary directory
    $arch->read("archive.tgz");

    # Iterate over all entries in the archive
    $arch->list_reset(); # Reset Iterator

    # Iterate through archive
    while(my $entry = $arch->list_next()) {
        my($tar_path, $phys_path) = @$entry;
        print "$tar_path\n";
    }

    # Get a huge list with all entries
    for my $entry (@{$arch->list_all()}) {
        my($tar_path, $real_path) = @$entry;
        print "Tarpath: $tar_path Tempfile: $real_path\n";
    }

    # Add a new entry
    $arch->add($logic_path, $file_or_stringref);

    # Remove an entry
    $arch->remove($logic_path);

    # Find the physical location of a temporary file
    my($tmp_path) = $arch->locate($tar_path);

    # Create a tarball
    $arch->write($tarfile, $compress);

Archive::Tar::Wrapper is an API wrapper around the tar command line program. It never stores anything in memory, but works on temporary directory structures on disk instead. It provides a mapping between the logical paths in the tarball and the 'real' files in the temporary directory on disk.

It differs from Archive::Tar in two ways:

• Archive::Tar::Wrapper doesn't hold anything in memory. Everything is stored on disk.
• Archive::Tar::Wrapper is 100% compliant with the platform's tar utility, because it uses it internally.

Be sure to check out the POD documentation available with the distribution!

• Currently, only tar programs supporting the z option (for compressing/decompressing) are supported. Future version will use gzip alternatively.
• Currently, you can't add empty directories to a tarball directly. You could add a temporary file within a directory, and then remove() the file.
• If you delete a file, the empty directories it was located in stay in the tarball. You could try to locate() them and delete them. This will be fixed, though.
• Filenames containing newlines are causing problems with the list iterators. To be fixed.
• If you ask Archive::Tar::Wrapper to add a file to a tarball, it copies it into a temporary directory and then calls the system tar to wrap up that directory into a tarball.

This approach has limitations when it comes to file permissions: If the file to be added belongs to a different user/group, Archive::Tar::Wrapper will adjust the uid/gid/permissions of the target file in the temporary directory to reflect the original file's settings, to make sure the system tar will add it like that to the tarball, just like a regular tar run on the original file would. But this will fail of course if the original file's uid is different from the current user's, unless the script is running with superuser rights. The tar program by itself (without Archive::Tar::Wrapper) works differently: It'll just make a note of a file's uid/gid/permissions in the tarball (which it can do without superuser rights) and upon extraction, it'll adjust the permissions of newly generated files if the -p option is given (default for superuser).

Archive::Tar::Wrapper doesn't currently handle filenames with embedded newlines.

Support on Microsoft Windows is limited.

Version below Windows 10 will not be supported for desktops, and for servers from Windows 2012 and above.

The GNU tar.exe program doesn't work properly with the current interface of Archive::Tar::Wrapper. You must use the bsdtar.exe and make sure it appears first in the PATH environment variable than the GNU tar (if it is installed). See http://libarchive.org/ for details about how to download and install bsdtar.exe, or go to http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages.html for a direct download.

Windows 10 might come already with bsdtar program installed. Check https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/virtualization/2017/12/19/tar-and-curl-come-to-windows/ for more details.

Having spaces in the path string to the tar program might be an issue too. Although there is some effort in terms of workaround it, you best might avoid it completely by installing in a different path than C:\Program Files.

This software is copyright (c) 2005 of Mike Schilli.

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with Archive-Tar-Wrapper. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

2005, Mike Schilli [email protected]

2018, Alceu Rodrigues de Freitas Junior [email protected]