tarballs

A tarball is a tar archive that bundles multiple files and directories into a single file, typically then compressed with gzip, bzip2, or xz. The term comes from the tar utility, used on Unix-like systems, and the idea of a bundled “ball” of files. Tarballs are commonly used to distribute software, source code, or collections of related files.

A tar archive preserves file metadata such as permissions, ownership, timestamps, and the directory structure. Typical file name extensions include .tar for uncompressed archives and compressed variants such as .tar.gz or .tgz (gzip), .tar.bz2 (bzip2), and .tar.xz (xz). Tar archives can be created and extracted on most Unix-like systems, and many tools on other platforms support them as well.

Usage examples: creating an archive, optionally compressed, and extracting it. Creating: tar -cvf archive.tar directory. Compressing with gzip: tar -czf archive.tar.gz directory. Extracting: tar -xvf archive.tar or tar -xzf archive.tar.gz. Commands may vary slightly across systems, but the basic syntax is consistent.

Advantages of tarballs include cross-platform viability in Unix-like environments, preservation of file metadata, and efficient packaging of large sets of files. They are often streamed through pipes to apply compression or to transmit over networks. Limitations include limited random access; content must be decompressed to access individual files. Security concerns arise when extracting from untrusted sources, as tar bombs and symlink attacks can occur; verify checksums and signatures and extract in a safe directory.