class Minitar

Synopsis

Using minitar is easy. The simplest case is:

require 'zlib'
require 'minitar'

# Packs everything that matches Find.find('tests').
# test.tar will automatically be closed by Minitar.pack.
Minitar.pack('tests', File.open('test.tar', 'wb'))

# Unpacks 'test.tar' to 'x', creating 'x' if necessary.
Minitar.unpack('test.tar', 'x')

A gzipped tar can be written with:

# test.tgz will be closed automatically.
Minitar.pack('tests', Zlib::GzipWriter.new(File.open('test.tgz', 'wb'))

# test.tgz will be closed automatically.
Minitar.unpack(Zlib::GzipReader.new(File.open('test.tgz', 'rb')), 'x')

As the case above shows, one need not write to a file. However, it will sometimes require that one dive a little deeper into the API, as in the case of StringIO objects. Note that I’m not providing a block with Minitar::Output, as Minitar::Output#close automatically closes both the Output object and the wrapped data stream object.

begin
  sgz = Zlib::GzipWriter.new(StringIO.new(""))
  tar = Minitar::Output.new(sgz)
  Find.find('tests') do |entry|
    Minitar.pack_file(entry, tar)
  end
ensure
    # Closes both tar and sgz.
  tar.close
end