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- .\" Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Tim Kientzle
- .\" All rights reserved.
- .\"
- .\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
- .\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
- .\" are met:
- .\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
- .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
- .\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
- .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
- .\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
- .\"
- .\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND
- .\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
- .\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
- .\" ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE
- .\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL
- .\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS
- .\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION)
- .\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT
- .\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY
- .\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF
- .\" SUCH DAMAGE.
- .\"
- .\" $FreeBSD$
- .\"
- .Dd March 18, 2012
- .Dt LIBARCHIVE 3
- .Os
- .Sh NAME
- .Nm libarchive
- .Nd functions for reading and writing streaming archives
- .Sh OVERVIEW
- The
- .Nm
- library provides a flexible interface for reading and writing
- archives in various formats such as tar and cpio.
- .Nm
- also supports reading and writing archives compressed using
- various compression filters such as gzip and bzip2.
- The library is inherently stream-oriented; readers serially iterate through
- the archive, writers serially add things to the archive.
- In particular, note that there is currently no built-in support for
- random access nor for in-place modification.
- .Pp
- When reading an archive, the library automatically detects the
- format and the compression.
- The library currently has read support for:
- .Bl -bullet -compact
- .It
- old-style tar archives,
- .It
- most variants of the POSIX
- .Dq ustar
- format,
- .It
- the POSIX
- .Dq pax interchange
- format,
- .It
- GNU-format tar archives,
- .It
- most common cpio archive formats,
- .It
- ISO9660 CD images (including RockRidge and Joliet extensions),
- .It
- Zip archives,
- .It
- ar archives (including GNU/SysV and BSD extensions),
- .It
- Microsoft CAB archives,
- .It
- LHA archives,
- .It
- mtree file tree descriptions,
- .It
- RAR archives,
- .It
- XAR archives.
- .El
- The library automatically detects archives compressed with
- .Xr gzip 1 ,
- .Xr bzip2 1 ,
- .Xr xz 1 ,
- .Xr lzip 1 ,
- or
- .Xr compress 1
- and decompresses them transparently.
- It can similarly detect and decode archives processed with
- .Xr uuencode 1
- or which have an
- .Xr rpm 1
- header.
- .Pp
- When writing an archive, you can specify the compression
- to be used and the format to use.
- The library can write
- .Bl -bullet -compact
- .It
- POSIX-standard
- .Dq ustar
- archives,
- .It
- POSIX
- .Dq pax interchange format
- archives,
- .It
- POSIX octet-oriented cpio archives,
- .It
- Zip archive,
- .It
- two different variants of shar archives,
- .It
- ISO9660 CD images,
- .It
- 7-Zip archives,
- .It
- ar archives,
- .It
- mtree file tree descriptions,
- .It
- XAR archives.
- .El
- Pax interchange format is an extension of the tar archive format that
- eliminates essentially all of the limitations of historic tar formats
- in a standard fashion that is supported
- by POSIX-compliant
- .Xr pax 1
- implementations on many systems as well as several newer implementations of
- .Xr tar 1 .
- Note that the default write format will suppress the pax extended
- attributes for most entries; explicitly requesting pax format will
- enable those attributes for all entries.
- .Pp
- The read and write APIs are accessed through the
- .Fn archive_read_XXX
- functions and the
- .Fn archive_write_XXX
- functions, respectively, and either can be used independently
- of the other.
- .Pp
- The rest of this manual page provides an overview of the library
- operation.
- More detailed information can be found in the individual manual
- pages for each API or utility function.
- .\"
- .Sh READING AN ARCHIVE
- See
- .Xr archive_read 3 .
- .\"
- .Sh WRITING AN ARCHIVE
- See
- .Xr archive_write 3 .
- .\"
- .Sh WRITING ENTRIES TO DISK
- The
- .Xr archive_write_disk 3
- API allows you to write
- .Xr archive_entry 3
- objects to disk using the same API used by
- .Xr archive_write 3 .
- The
- .Xr archive_write_disk 3
- API is used internally by
- .Fn archive_read_extract ;
- using it directly can provide greater control over how entries
- get written to disk.
- This API also makes it possible to share code between
- archive-to-archive copy and archive-to-disk extraction
- operations.
- .Sh READING ENTRIES FROM DISK
- The
- .Xr archive_read_disk 3
- supports for populating
- .Xr archive_entry 3
- objects from information in the filesystem.
- This includes the information accessible from the
- .Xr stat 2
- system call as well as ACLs, extended attributes,
- and other metadata.
- The
- .Xr archive_read_disk 3
- API also supports iterating over directory trees,
- which allows directories of files to be read using
- an API compatible with
- the
- .Xr archive_read 3
- API.
- .Sh DESCRIPTION
- Detailed descriptions of each function are provided by the
- corresponding manual pages.
- .Pp
- All of the functions utilize an opaque
- .Tn struct archive
- datatype that provides access to the archive contents.
- .Pp
- The
- .Tn struct archive_entry
- structure contains a complete description of a single archive
- entry.
- It uses an opaque interface that is fully documented in
- .Xr archive_entry 3 .
- .Pp
- Users familiar with historic formats should be aware that the newer
- variants have eliminated most restrictions on the length of textual fields.
- Clients should not assume that filenames, link names, user names, or
- group names are limited in length.
- In particular, pax interchange format can easily accommodate pathnames
- in arbitrary character sets that exceed
- .Va PATH_MAX .
- .Sh RETURN VALUES
- Most functions return
- .Cm ARCHIVE_OK
- (zero) on success, non-zero on error.
- The return value indicates the general severity of the error, ranging
- from
- .Cm ARCHIVE_WARN ,
- which indicates a minor problem that should probably be reported
- to the user, to
- .Cm ARCHIVE_FATAL ,
- which indicates a serious problem that will prevent any further
- operations on this archive.
- On error, the
- .Fn archive_errno
- function can be used to retrieve a numeric error code (see
- .Xr errno 2 ) .
- The
- .Fn archive_error_string
- returns a textual error message suitable for display.
- .Pp
- .Fn archive_read_new
- and
- .Fn archive_write_new
- return pointers to an allocated and initialized
- .Tn struct archive
- object.
- .Pp
- .Fn archive_read_data
- and
- .Fn archive_write_data
- return a count of the number of bytes actually read or written.
- A value of zero indicates the end of the data for this entry.
- A negative value indicates an error, in which case the
- .Fn archive_errno
- and
- .Fn archive_error_string
- functions can be used to obtain more information.
- .Sh ENVIRONMENT
- There are character set conversions within the
- .Xr archive_entry 3
- functions that are impacted by the currently-selected locale.
- .Sh SEE ALSO
- .Xr tar 1 ,
- .Xr archive_entry 3 ,
- .Xr archive_read 3 ,
- .Xr archive_util 3 ,
- .Xr archive_write 3 ,
- .Xr tar 5
- .Sh HISTORY
- The
- .Nm libarchive
- library first appeared in
- .Fx 5.3 .
- .Sh AUTHORS
- .An -nosplit
- The
- .Nm libarchive
- library was originally written by
- .An Tim Kientzle Aq kientzle@acm.org .
- .Sh BUGS
- Some archive formats support information that is not supported by
- .Tn struct archive_entry .
- Such information cannot be fully archived or restored using this library.
- This includes, for example, comments, character sets,
- or the arbitrary key/value pairs that can appear in
- pax interchange format archives.
- .Pp
- Conversely, of course, not all of the information that can be
- stored in an
- .Tn struct archive_entry
- is supported by all formats.
- For example, cpio formats do not support nanosecond timestamps;
- old tar formats do not support large device numbers.
- .Pp
- The ISO9660 reader cannot yet read all ISO9660 images;
- it should learn how to seek.
- .Pp
- The AR writer requires the client program to use
- two passes, unlike all other libarchive writers.
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