tarball

A tarball is a tar archive, often compressed, used on Unix-like systems to package multiple files into a single file. Tarballs typically use filenames such as archive.tar.gz, archive.tgz, archive.tar.bz2, or archive.tar.xz. The term tarball blends tar (the archiving format) with the compression extensions, and tar itself stands for tape archive, originally designed to store files on magnetic tape. Today tarballs are widely used for software distribution, backups, and data transfer.

A tar archive stores file data, directory structure, permissions, timestamps, and other metadata, but does not perform compression by itself. Compression is achieved after the archive is created, resulting in a single compressed file that is smaller and easier to transport.

Common formats and commands: The typical extensions reflect the compression method: .tar (uncompressed), .tar.gz or .tgz (gzip), .tar.bz2 (bzip2), .tar.xz (xz). To create a gzip tarball: tar -czf archive.tar.gz directory; to extract: tar -xzf archive.tar.gz. For bzip2 use -j (tar -cjf archive.tar.bz2 directory; tar -xjf archive.tar.bz2). For xz use -J (tar -cJf archive.tar.xz directory; tar -xJf archive.tar.xz). On Windows, tools like 7-Zip can handle tarballs.

Usage notes: Tarballs are popular for distributing open-source software and collections of files. They preserve metadata and file permissions, but they are not encrypted or authenticated by default; verify checksums or signatures when obtaining software. Some tarballs may contain absolute paths or symlinks that pose security risks during extraction; extracting in a safe directory and inspecting contents is recommended.

See also: tar, gzip, bzip2, xz, archive.