NTar 1.0.1

NTar

NTar is a small .NET library for serializing/deserializing a tar file.

It exposes simple APIs to create TAR archives from directories or programmatic entries and to read/extract TAR archives from streams.

Key highlights

• Small, focused: reading and writing TAR without heavyweight dependencies.
• Supports a wide range of .NET targets (see Supported targets).
• Simple streaming APIs for programmatic creation and extraction.

Supported targets

The library provides builds and packages for multiple targets including (but not limited to):

• .NET Framework 4.5 and later
• .NET 5.0 and later
• .NET Standard 2.0 and later

Installation

Install the package from NuGet:

dotnet add package NTar

Usage examples

Create a .tar file from a directory:

// Creates "test.tar" (next to the input directory)
"C:\path\to\folder".TarTo("test.tar");

Create a tar stream from programmatic entries and write to disk:

var entries = new List<TarEntryStream>();
// populate TarEntryStream objects (MemoryStream wrappers) and set FileName, LastModifiedTime, IsDirectory, etc.
using Stream tarStream = entries.Tar();
using var outFile = File.Create("out.tar");
tarStream.CopyTo(outFile);

Enumerate entries from a tar stream:

foreach (var entry in myTarStream.Untar())
{
    Console.WriteLine(entry.FileName);
    // entry is a TarEntryStream-like object exposing FileName, LastModifiedTime, Length, and a Stream
}

Extract a tar stream to a directory:

myTarStream.UntarTo("./output");

API notes

• Tar creation helpers are available in TarHelper.Tar.cs (e.g. string.TarTo(string outputFile) and IEnumerable<TarEntryStream>.Tar() returning a seekable Stream).
• Untar / extraction helpers are provided in TarHelper.Untar.cs as stream extension methods: Stream.Untar() and Stream.UntarTo(string outputDirectory).

License

This project is licensed under the BSD-Clause 2 license.

Acknowledgements

This project builds on work by Alexandre Mutel (aka xoofx).

If you need a different TAR implementation with more features, consider alternatives such as mfow/tar-cs.