tar_light for Rust

A simple and lightweight tar archive reader and writer library in Rust.

Features

📦 Pack and unpack TAR archives (.tar)
🗜️ Support for gzip compression (.tar.gz, .tgz)
📋 List files in archives
🚀 Simple and intuitive API
🔧 Command-line tool included
⚡ No external dependencies except flate2 for gzip support

Installation

Add to your Cargo.toml:

[dependencies]
tar_light = "0.1"

Or use cargo:

cargo add tar_light

Usage

Packing files into a TAR archive

use tar_light::pack;

// Create plain TAR archive
let files = vec!["file1.txt",　"file2.txt", "dir/file3.txt"];
pack("archive.tar", &files);

// Create gzip-compressed TAR archive
pack("archive.tar.gz", &files);

Unpacking files from a TAR archive

use tar_light::unpack;

// Extract plain TAR archive
unpack("archive.tar", "output_directory");

// Extract gzip-compressed TAR archive
unpack("archive.tar.gz", "output_directory");

Listing files in a TAR archive

use tar_light::list;

// Works with both .tar and .tar.gz
match list("archive.tar.gz") {
    Ok(headers) => {
        println!("Files in archive:");
        for header in headers {
            println!("  {} ({} bytes)", header.name, header.size);
        }
    }
    Err(e) => eprintln!("Error: {}", e),
}

Advanced usage with low-level API

use tar_light::{read_tar, write_tar, TarEntry, TarHeader};
use std::fs;

// Reading TAR archives
let tar_data = fs::read("archive.tar").unwrap();
let entries = read_tar(&tar_data);

for entry in entries {
    println!("{}: {} bytes", entry.header.name, entry.header.size);
}

// Creating TAR archives
let mut entries = Vec::new();
let header = TarHeader::new("hello.txt".to_string(), 0o644, 12);
let data = b"Hello, World".to_vec();
let header_bytes = header.to_bytes();

entries.push(TarEntry { header, data, header_bytes });
let tar_data = write_tar(&entries);
fs::write("new_archive.tar", tar_data).unwrap();

Command Line Tool

The library includes a command-line tool for basic tar operations:

# Pack files into TAR archive
cargo run -- pack archive.tar file1.txt file2.txt

# Pack files into gzip-compressed TAR archive
cargo run -- pack archive.tar.gz file1.txt file2.txt

# Unpack archive
cargo run -- unpack archive.tar output_dir

# Unpack gzip-compressed archive
cargo run -- unpack archive.tar.gz output_dir

# List files in archive
cargo run -- list archive.tar.gz

Supported Formats

.tar - Plain TAR archives
.tar.gz - Gzip-compressed TAR archives
.tgz - Gzip-compressed TAR archives (alternative extension)

The format is automatically detected based on the file extension.

License

MIT

tar_light 0.1.4