Editing Tar (computing) (section)

==Key implementations==
<!-- Implementations included with major unixoid OS only. No general archivers that can just "also" do tar - they probably just include libarchive included here. -->

Historically, many systems have implemented tar, and many [[Comparison of file archivers|general file archivers]] have at least partial support for tar (often using one of the implementations below). The history of tar is a story of incompatibilities, known as the "tar wars". Most tar implementations can also read and create [[cpio]] and [[pax (command)|pax]] (the latter actually is a ''tar''-format with [[POSIX]]-2001-extensions).

Key implementations in order of origin:
* '''[[Solaris (operating system)|Solaris]] tar''', based on the original Unix V7 tar <!-- is this correct? --> and comes as the default on the Solaris operating system
* '''[[GNU]] tar''' is the default on most [[Linux]] distributions. It is based on the public domain implementation pdtar which started in 1987. Recent versions can use various formats, including ustar, pax, GNU and v7 formats.
* '''[[FreeBSD]] tar''' (also '''BSD tar''') has become the default tar on most [[Berkeley Software Distribution]]-based operating systems including [[macOS|Mac OS X]]. The core functionality is available as [[libarchive]] for inclusion in other applications.  This implementation automatically detects the format of the file and can extract from tar, pax, cpio, zip, rar, ar, xar, rpm and ISO 9660 cdrom images. It also comes with a functionally equivalent cpio command-line interface.
* '''Schily tar''', better known as '''star''' ({{IPAc-en|ˈ|ɛ|s|ˌ|t|ɑːr}}, {{respell|ESS|tar}}),<ref>{{ Cite web | url = https://cdrtools.sourceforge.net/private/star.html | title = Star a very fast and Posix 1003.1 compliant tar archiver for UNIX | access-date = 2023-09-02 | first = Jörg | last = Schilling | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20230709001233/https://cdrtools.sourceforge.net/private/star.html | archive-date = 2023-07-09 }}</ref> is historically significant as some of its extensions were quite popular. First published in April 1997,<ref>{{cite web|url=https://invisible-island.net/autoconf/portability-tar.html#var_star |title=TAR versus Portability: Schily tar |date=January 4, 2015 |access-date=October 23, 2021 |author=Thomas E. Dickey}}</ref> its developer has stated that he began development in 1982.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://schilytools.sourceforge.net/man/man1/star.1.html |title=star - unique standard tape archiver |author=Jörg Schilling |date=September 4, 2021 |access-date=October 23, 2021 }}{{Dead link|date=March 2025 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref>
* '''Python tarfile''' module supports multiple tar formats, including ustar, pax and gnu; it can read but not create V7 format and the SunOS tar extended format; pax is the default format for creation of archives.<ref>[https://docs.python.org/3/library/tarfile.html tarfile] module, python.org</ref> Available since 2003.<ref>[https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/3.10/Lib/tarfile.py tarfile.py], github.com</ref>

Additionally, most [[Pax (command)|pax]] and [[cpio]] implementations can read and create multiple types of tar files.