Talk:Tar (file format)

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[edit] No information about the file format

Some irony that an article called Tar file format manages to say exactly nothing about the Tar file format. ==Tagishsimon (talk)

Now it does! (although I am tired so will write about the ustar extensions another day, unless anyone else want to) Sam Jervis 23:18, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)
IMO, the article should be splitted into "tar (file format)" and "tar (file archiver)" --Minghong 12:41, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Tar vs Ar

I never knew about ar before I came to Wikipedia. But now that I do, why is tar used instead of ar? :)--Chealer 22:58, 2005 Apr 1 (UTC)

Because traditionally tar was used for backups to tape and ar was used for static libraries. So ar's format is highly tied to ld and static libraries. Furthermore ar archives are not necessarily cross platform due to endianess, and the tar format was standardized through POSIX.--b4hand 16:41, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Conformance to quality standards of Wikipedia

This article is somewhat of a tutorial to a user of the specific tool in a specific operating system. Moreover words like "Whoops" and examples make this article both lengthy as well below-par. Please consider conformance, or put a {{cleanup|January 2006}} tag to notify people who use this as an encyclopedia and not as a man-page. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Dormant25 (talk • contribs) 06:53, 3 January 2006.

I've removed the cleanup tag as there are no examples of colloquialism anymore and AFAICC it is perfectly acceptable to include in an article about a file format how to create and view files in that format. I'm sure most readers want to know how to actually use it to get stuff done, not the other more esoteric details like the technical details of the format and its history. Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley talk contrib 19:10, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
I disagree with Mr. Blakesley. The user who wanted to get straight to using the format would go to the manpage, reference book, tutorial book, operating system documentation, or whatever. The person who is interested in how a tar file is actually laid out, what the advantages/disadvantages of the layout are, etc., without researching it herself - she would be the one to turn to wikipedia - wikipedia would be the natural place to turn, and she is the user we should be focusing on. Now, it is appropriate to have some discussion of what tools people use to manage these archives, and what tools can read or write them, but for a detailed description of how the tools are used (and a more encyclopedic description of how the tools are implemented/how they came to be as they are). I would suggest putting that on a separate page (i.e. tar (file format), tar (unix command), and eventually maybe BSD tar, and GNU tar...). I note that there is already a mistake about BSD tar in the article. Jimmy hartzell 17:27, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Compression

The vast majority of instances of the "tar" program that one is likely to encounter now include the "z" (compress) option. Thus the discussion about why this is a bad idea is kind of silly. Tim Bray 05:22, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] tarball

Does anybody know where the word tarball comes from? --Lionel H. Grillet 12:36, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Probably from the word... "Tarball", which is similar to a tarbaby. --maru (talk) contribs 14:01, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
Has anyone else noticed the word tarball in the song Bubble Toes by Jack Johnson? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Samineru (talk • contribs) 00:07, April 2, 2006 (UTC).
I was under the impression that tarballs were .tgz files, not .tar files. 71.123.19.163 05:42, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
The term TARBALL is slang, a sort of self depricating joke that requires the following background:
1) In the early days, tar was used to archive programs and program source because end users and their data files were typically stored in other formats (or not at all -- we were programers and one thing we did NOT care about was end users)
2) One of the worst comments you could make about a program design was that it was a MUDBALL -- meaning it had no structure at all, a total dirty mess from start to finish, etc.
3) Ergo your archived source code became known as a tarball
I was there.
It's a shame to let the name tarball become slang for any tar archive. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 63.197.50.90 (talk • contribs) 16:25, 3 August 2006.

[edit] Konqueror web archives

I've added an additional file extension, .war, which are Konqueror web archives. Due to the possibility of confusion with Java archives (also .war) I think this needs a citation.

There are throw-away comments on the web that ".war files are renamed .tar.gz" files, especially on KDE discussion lists, and I believe that they are reliable, because I have played with .war files and satisfied myself that they actually are tar files, compressed with gzip. E.g. tar -xzf archive.war will extract the files from one. Problem is, I can't find an authorative source to cite. Maybe the KDE source code?

Also, there are incorrect references on some mailing lists that .war files are "zip files". I've also seen posts made on KDE mailing lists suggesting that Konq should/will use .wtz instead of .war, but I haven't seen any evidence that was ever any more than a proposal.

Assistence in finding an authoritive source to cite will be appreciated. Limeguin 15:21, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] BSD tar

If my understanding is correct, BSD tar does not need an external program to handle gzip/gunzip, but rather uses the libarchive library it is a wrapper for. If this is in fact the case, the article should be corrected, but I cannot find any documentation that explicitly states that no external program is called. Jimmy hartzell 17:29, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] To the person who removed commands section

I thought this section was really useful and think it should be put back. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 164.165.217.254 (talk) 23:36, 30 March 2007 (UTC).

Heaven forbid that wikipedia ever contains any useful information ever. Only mindless (but "Encyclopedic"!) trivia will be allowed. Grr. Freeking... grk... delete-happy... grumble...
Yeah, useful to all those unix gurus who go to wikipedia before man for usage arguments. All zero of them. Chris Cunningham 15:24, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
1) Man pages are significantly less readable. 2) What about the windows gurus who find themselves stuck in unix for whatever reason? -- See, this is the problem with WP - no one considers even slightly different use-cases. Case in point: various articles on games - deleted because they're "guides for gamers and we don't do that lol" - no one considered (the only slightly out-of-the-box idea) of game designers/developers doing legitimate research (gack you got me started - don't get me started!). —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 60.240.227.227 (talk) 15:47, 4 April 2007 (UTC).
Just get used to it: Wikipedia is an encyclopedia; for other kinds of content, there are (tens of?) thousands wikis out there, which you are equally welcome to edit — or even migrate deleted Wikipedia content to, as Wikipedia is licensed under the GFDL. -- intgr 16:11, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
"intgr" is right. Wikipedia's official policy as stated at WP:NOT#IINFO makes it very clear that Wikipedia articles are not instruction manuals or textbooks. Manpages may be less readable but they're certainly more reliable! Rwxrwxrwx 14:00, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
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