jdx-tar

Synchronous, streaming tar extraction with support for all GNU sparse formats, including the PAX sparse formats that other pure-Rust tar crates cannot extract.

use jdx_tar::{Archive, UnpackOptions};
use std::fs::File;

let archive = File::open("release.tar")?;
let summary = Archive::new(archive).unpack("output", &mut UnpackOptions::default())?;
println!("extracted {} files", summary.files);
# Ok::<(), std::io::Error>(())

Input is anything that implements Read. Decompression is the caller's responsibility: wrap the file in a gzip/xz/zstd decoder first.

Why another tar crate?

mise kept hitting release tarballs that no Rust tar crate could extract, and papered over it by shelling out to a system tar. That fallback was unreliable: which tar you get depends on the platform and PATH, and GNU tar itself fails on some of these archives with Unexpected EOF (only bsdtar handles them all). This crate exists to delete that fallback.

The gap is GNU sparse files in PAX format (GNU.sparse.* extended headers, formats 0.0, 0.1, and 1.0), which is what modern GNU tar writes with --sparse. These appear in real release artifacts, typically disk images where a multi-gigabyte sparse file compresses to a few megabytes. The tar crate extracts these as a mangled GNUSparseFile.0/<name> file whose contents are the raw sparse map and packed data.

	`jdx-tar`	`tar` (tar-rs)	`astral-tokio-tar`	libarchive bindings	system `tar` subprocess
PAX GNU sparse extraction (0.0/0.1/1.0)	✅	❌	❌ (validates, doesn't expand)	✅	depends which `tar`
Old GNU sparse (type `S`)	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
Sync `Read`-based streaming	✅	✅	❌ (async only)	✅	n/a
`strip_components` built in (any depth)	✅	❌	❌	❌	✅
Progress + per-entry callbacks	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌
Secure extraction is the only mode	✅	partial (unchecked `Entry::unpack` exists)	✅	❌	❌
Pure Rust, no C, `unsafe_code = "forbid"`	✅	✅	✅	❌ (links C)	n/a
Writes archives	❌	✅	✅	✅	✅

This crate's header parsing draws from the tar crate (see acknowledgements); use that or astral-tokio-tar if you need archive creation or an async API today. Archive writing is not implemented here yet, and a well-tested PR adding synchronous, streaming tar writing would be welcome.

Features

All four GNU sparse representations: old GNU (type S, including extended headers) and PAX 0.0, 0.1, and 1.0. Sparse semantics follow Go's archive/tar and the GNU tar manual.
On Unix, sparse files are extracted with real filesystem holes, so a 20 GiB-logical disk image occupies only its data size on disk. On Windows, extracted contents are identical but holes are not preserved, so sparse files take their full logical size.
Entries read as their logical contents (holes read as zeroes), and the data-extent map is available via sparse_map(). Paths are fully resolved across long names, PAX overrides, and sparse name un-mangling, so you never see GNUSparseFile.0/....
strip_components at any depth, applied after name resolution, plus preserve_mtime, preserve_permissions, and overwrite.
on_progress and on_entry callbacks. unpack returns an UnpackSummary with counts and a typed SkipReason for every skipped entry.
One dependency (filetime), unsafe_code = "forbid", fuzzed with cargo-fuzz.

Security

Extraction is secure by default and has no insecure mode. Rejected: absolute paths, parent-directory traversal, writes through previously extracted symlinks, invalid header checksums, oversized PAX records, excessive sparse maps, and inconsistent or orphaned sparse metadata such as GNU.sparse.name path-aliasing. Link targets may point outside the destination; archive entries are never written outside it.

As with any path-based extraction API, callers should ensure no untrusted local process can modify the destination tree during extraction.

Progress bars

on_progress reports bytes consumed from the input reader, which is the decompressed stream. Its total size usually isn't known up front, so it works as an activity signal but not a bounded bar. For a real progress bar, count bytes on the compressed file with a wrapping reader placed before the decoder, and use the file's size as the total. Extraction is streaming, so compressed bytes consumed track overall progress accurately. Use on_entry for per-file status messages.

Non-goals

Compression codecs: pass a decompressed Read.
Async: wrap calls in spawn_blocking.
Other formats: no zip, no 7z.

Minimum supported Rust version

Rust 1.85 (edition 2024).

Acknowledgements

Header layout and parsing details draw from the MIT/Apache-2.0 licensed tar crate. Sparse-format semantics follow Go's archive/tar implementation and the GNU tar manual's Storing Sparse Files appendix. The PAX sparse metadata hardening checks were informed by the security work in astral-tokio-tar.

License

Licensed under either of MIT or Apache-2.0, at your option.

jdx-tar 1.0.0