libarchive.3 8.0 KB

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  1. .\" Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Tim Kientzle
  2. .\" All rights reserved.
  3. .\"
  4. .\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
  5. .\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
  6. .\" are met:
  7. .\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
  8. .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
  9. .\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
  10. .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
  11. .\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
  12. .\"
  13. .\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND
  14. .\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
  15. .\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
  16. .\" ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE
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  24. .\"
  25. .\" $FreeBSD$
  26. .\"
  27. .Dd March 18, 2012
  28. .Dt LIBARCHIVE 3
  29. .Os
  30. .Sh NAME
  31. .Nm libarchive
  32. .Nd functions for reading and writing streaming archives
  33. .Sh OVERVIEW
  34. The
  35. .Nm
  36. library provides a flexible interface for reading and writing
  37. archives in various formats such as tar and cpio.
  38. .Nm
  39. also supports reading and writing archives compressed using
  40. various compression filters such as gzip and bzip2.
  41. The library is inherently stream-oriented; readers serially iterate through
  42. the archive, writers serially add things to the archive.
  43. In particular, note that there is currently no built-in support for
  44. random access nor for in-place modification.
  45. .Pp
  46. When reading an archive, the library automatically detects the
  47. format and the compression.
  48. The library currently has read support for:
  49. .Bl -bullet -compact
  50. .It
  51. old-style tar archives,
  52. .It
  53. most variants of the POSIX
  54. .Dq ustar
  55. format,
  56. .It
  57. the POSIX
  58. .Dq pax interchange
  59. format,
  60. .It
  61. GNU-format tar archives,
  62. .It
  63. most common cpio archive formats,
  64. .It
  65. ISO9660 CD images (including RockRidge and Joliet extensions),
  66. .It
  67. Zip archives,
  68. .It
  69. ar archives (including GNU/SysV and BSD extensions),
  70. .It
  71. Microsoft CAB archives,
  72. .It
  73. LHA archives,
  74. .It
  75. mtree file tree descriptions,
  76. .It
  77. RAR archives,
  78. .It
  79. XAR archives.
  80. .El
  81. The library automatically detects archives compressed with
  82. .Xr gzip 1 ,
  83. .Xr bzip2 1 ,
  84. .Xr xz 1 ,
  85. .Xr lzip 1 ,
  86. or
  87. .Xr compress 1
  88. and decompresses them transparently.
  89. It can similarly detect and decode archives processed with
  90. .Xr uuencode 1
  91. or which have an
  92. .Xr rpm 1
  93. header.
  94. .Pp
  95. When writing an archive, you can specify the compression
  96. to be used and the format to use.
  97. The library can write
  98. .Bl -bullet -compact
  99. .It
  100. POSIX-standard
  101. .Dq ustar
  102. archives,
  103. .It
  104. POSIX
  105. .Dq pax interchange format
  106. archives,
  107. .It
  108. POSIX octet-oriented cpio archives,
  109. .It
  110. Zip archive,
  111. .It
  112. two different variants of shar archives,
  113. .It
  114. ISO9660 CD images,
  115. .It
  116. 7-Zip archives,
  117. .It
  118. ar archives,
  119. .It
  120. mtree file tree descriptions,
  121. .It
  122. XAR archives.
  123. .El
  124. Pax interchange format is an extension of the tar archive format that
  125. eliminates essentially all of the limitations of historic tar formats
  126. in a standard fashion that is supported
  127. by POSIX-compliant
  128. .Xr pax 1
  129. implementations on many systems as well as several newer implementations of
  130. .Xr tar 1 .
  131. Note that the default write format will suppress the pax extended
  132. attributes for most entries; explicitly requesting pax format will
  133. enable those attributes for all entries.
  134. .Pp
  135. The read and write APIs are accessed through the
  136. .Fn archive_read_XXX
  137. functions and the
  138. .Fn archive_write_XXX
  139. functions, respectively, and either can be used independently
  140. of the other.
  141. .Pp
  142. The rest of this manual page provides an overview of the library
  143. operation.
  144. More detailed information can be found in the individual manual
  145. pages for each API or utility function.
  146. .\"
  147. .Sh READING AN ARCHIVE
  148. See
  149. .Xr archive_read 3 .
  150. .\"
  151. .Sh WRITING AN ARCHIVE
  152. See
  153. .Xr archive_write 3 .
  154. .\"
  155. .Sh WRITING ENTRIES TO DISK
  156. The
  157. .Xr archive_write_disk 3
  158. API allows you to write
  159. .Xr archive_entry 3
  160. objects to disk using the same API used by
  161. .Xr archive_write 3 .
  162. The
  163. .Xr archive_write_disk 3
  164. API is used internally by
  165. .Fn archive_read_extract ;
  166. using it directly can provide greater control over how entries
  167. get written to disk.
  168. This API also makes it possible to share code between
  169. archive-to-archive copy and archive-to-disk extraction
  170. operations.
  171. .Sh READING ENTRIES FROM DISK
  172. The
  173. .Xr archive_read_disk 3
  174. supports for populating
  175. .Xr archive_entry 3
  176. objects from information in the filesystem.
  177. This includes the information accessible from the
  178. .Xr stat 2
  179. system call as well as ACLs, extended attributes,
  180. and other metadata.
  181. The
  182. .Xr archive_read_disk 3
  183. API also supports iterating over directory trees,
  184. which allows directories of files to be read using
  185. an API compatible with
  186. the
  187. .Xr archive_read 3
  188. API.
  189. .Sh DESCRIPTION
  190. Detailed descriptions of each function are provided by the
  191. corresponding manual pages.
  192. .Pp
  193. All of the functions utilize an opaque
  194. .Tn struct archive
  195. datatype that provides access to the archive contents.
  196. .Pp
  197. The
  198. .Tn struct archive_entry
  199. structure contains a complete description of a single archive
  200. entry.
  201. It uses an opaque interface that is fully documented in
  202. .Xr archive_entry 3 .
  203. .Pp
  204. Users familiar with historic formats should be aware that the newer
  205. variants have eliminated most restrictions on the length of textual fields.
  206. Clients should not assume that filenames, link names, user names, or
  207. group names are limited in length.
  208. In particular, pax interchange format can easily accommodate pathnames
  209. in arbitrary character sets that exceed
  210. .Va PATH_MAX .
  211. .Sh RETURN VALUES
  212. Most functions return
  213. .Cm ARCHIVE_OK
  214. (zero) on success, non-zero on error.
  215. The return value indicates the general severity of the error, ranging
  216. from
  217. .Cm ARCHIVE_WARN ,
  218. which indicates a minor problem that should probably be reported
  219. to the user, to
  220. .Cm ARCHIVE_FATAL ,
  221. which indicates a serious problem that will prevent any further
  222. operations on this archive.
  223. On error, the
  224. .Fn archive_errno
  225. function can be used to retrieve a numeric error code (see
  226. .Xr errno 2 ) .
  227. The
  228. .Fn archive_error_string
  229. returns a textual error message suitable for display.
  230. .Pp
  231. .Fn archive_read_new
  232. and
  233. .Fn archive_write_new
  234. return pointers to an allocated and initialized
  235. .Tn struct archive
  236. object.
  237. .Pp
  238. .Fn archive_read_data
  239. and
  240. .Fn archive_write_data
  241. return a count of the number of bytes actually read or written.
  242. A value of zero indicates the end of the data for this entry.
  243. A negative value indicates an error, in which case the
  244. .Fn archive_errno
  245. and
  246. .Fn archive_error_string
  247. functions can be used to obtain more information.
  248. .Sh ENVIRONMENT
  249. There are character set conversions within the
  250. .Xr archive_entry 3
  251. functions that are impacted by the currently-selected locale.
  252. .Sh SEE ALSO
  253. .Xr tar 1 ,
  254. .Xr archive_entry 3 ,
  255. .Xr archive_read 3 ,
  256. .Xr archive_util 3 ,
  257. .Xr archive_write 3 ,
  258. .Xr tar 5
  259. .Sh HISTORY
  260. The
  261. .Nm libarchive
  262. library first appeared in
  263. .Fx 5.3 .
  264. .Sh AUTHORS
  265. .An -nosplit
  266. The
  267. .Nm libarchive
  268. library was originally written by
  269. .An Tim Kientzle Aq kientzle@acm.org .
  270. .Sh BUGS
  271. Some archive formats support information that is not supported by
  272. .Tn struct archive_entry .
  273. Such information cannot be fully archived or restored using this library.
  274. This includes, for example, comments, character sets,
  275. or the arbitrary key/value pairs that can appear in
  276. pax interchange format archives.
  277. .Pp
  278. Conversely, of course, not all of the information that can be
  279. stored in an
  280. .Tn struct archive_entry
  281. is supported by all formats.
  282. For example, cpio formats do not support nanosecond timestamps;
  283. old tar formats do not support large device numbers.
  284. .Pp
  285. The ISO9660 reader cannot yet read all ISO9660 images;
  286. it should learn how to seek.
  287. .Pp
  288. The AR writer requires the client program to use
  289. two passes, unlike all other libarchive writers.