Qore TAR Module

This module provides TAR archive functionality for the Qore programming language.

Features

• Create and extract TAR archives
• Support for multiple compression methods: gzip, bzip2, xz, zstd, lz4
• Support for multiple TAR formats: ustar, pax, GNU, V7
• In-memory archive operations
• Streaming API for large files
• Stream-based I/O (read/write from Qore streams)
• File metadata preservation (permissions, ownership, timestamps)
• Support for special file types (symlinks, hardlinks, sparse files)
• Archive encryption and multi-volume support

Requirements

• Qore 2.0 or later
• libarchive 3.0 or later
• OpenSSL (optional, for encryption support)

Building

mkdir build && cd build
cmake ..
make
sudo make install

Quick Start

Creating an Archive

#!/usr/bin/env qore

%requires tar

# Create a gzip-compressed archive
TarFile tar("backup.tar.gz", "w");
tar.add("file.txt", "Hello, World!");
tar.addFile("docs/readme.txt", "/path/to/readme.txt");
tar.addDirectory("empty_dir/");
tar.close();

Reading an Archive

#!/usr/bin/env qore

%requires tar

# Open and read archive
TarFile tar("backup.tar.gz", "r");

# List entries
for (hash<TarEntryInfo> entry : tar.entries()) {
    printf("%s: %d bytes\n", entry.name, entry.size);
}

# Extract a specific file
binary data = tar.read("file.txt");
tar.close();

Extracting an Archive

#!/usr/bin/env qore

%requires tar

TarFile tar("backup.tar.gz", "r");
tar.extractAll({"destination": "/tmp/extracted"});
tar.close();

In-Memory Archives

#!/usr/bin/env qore

%requires tar

# Create archive in memory
TarFile tar();
tar.add("data.txt", "Some data");
binary archive_data = tar.toData();

# Read from memory
TarFile tar2(archive_data);
string content = tar2.readText("data.txt");

Data Provider

The module includes TarDataProvider for use with Qore's data provider framework:

%requires TarDataProvider

# Get the data provider factory and navigate to the action
AbstractDataProvider dp = DataProvider::getFactoryObjectFromStringEx("tar{}/archive/create");

# Execute the action
hash<auto> result = dp.doRequest({
    "archive_path": "/tmp/backup.tar.gz",
    "compression": "gzip",
    "files": (
        {"name": "file.txt", "text": "Hello, World!"},
    ),
});

License

MIT License - see COPYING.MIT for details.

Copyright

Copyright 2026 Qore Technologies, s.r.o.