libarchive is a free and open-source library for reading and writing various archive and compression formats. It is written in C and works on most Unix-like systems and Windows.[3]
| Initial release | 2003[1] |
|---|---|
| Stable release | 3.7.4[2]  / 26 April 2024 |
| Repository | |
| Written in | C |
| Operating system | cross-platform |
| Type | library |
| License | New BSD License[3] |
| Website | libarchive |
History
libarchive's development was started in 2003 as part of the FreeBSD project.[1] During the early years it was led by the FreeBSD project, but later it became an independent project.[4] It was first released with FreeBSD 5.3 in November 2004.[5]
libarchive
libarchive automatically detects and reads archive formats.[6] If the archive is compressed, libarchive also detects and handles compression formats before evaluating the archive.[6] libarchive is designed to minimize the copying of data internally for optimal performance.[7]
Supported archive formats:[8]
Utilities
libarchive provides command-line utilities called bsdtar and bsdcpio.[3] These are complete re-implementation based on libarchive.[9][10] These are the default system tar and cpio on FreeBSD, NetBSD, macOS and Windows.[5]
There is also bsdcat, designed to decompress a file to the standard output like zcat.[11]
Users
libarchive was originally developed for FreeBSD, but is also used in NetBSD and macOS as part of those operating systems.[5]
bsdtar has been included in Windows since Windows 10 April 2018 Update.[12] In May 2023, Microsoft announced Windows 11 will natively support additional archive formats such as 7z and RAR via libarchive.[13]