TARArchiven

TARArchiven is a concept within the tar archiving ecosystem describing an enhanced TAR-based archive format and toolset focused on metadata preservation, data integrity, and interoperability. It builds on the traditional TAR format by using POSIX PAX extended headers to store additional metadata and a compact manifest inside the archive that maps each path to its attributes, checksums, and optional encryption settings. The format supports compression wrappers such as gzip, bzip2, and xz and can create multi-volume archives to handle large datasets. It preserves standard tar file information including file type, permissions, ownership, and timestamps, and extends this with extended attributes, ACLs, and Unicode path support.

TARArchiven provides integrity verification through per-file checksums and an overall archive digest, enabling offline verification of archive contents. Optional encryption can be applied to the archive or individual entries, and key management is handled via external tools or libraries. The reference implementations emphasize streaming operation, allowing archives to be created or inspected in real time without requiring complete materialization on disk.

Compatibility considerations note that standard tar tools can extract the underlying file hierarchy, but extended metadata may require a compatible reader to fully restore attributes. TARArchiven is used in data preservation, disaster recovery, and archival workflows where long-term metadata fidelity and verifiability are important. See also tar, PAX, compression formats, and data integrity practices.