README.md

microtar

A lightweight tar library written in ANSI C.

This version is a fork of rxi's microtar with bugfixes and API changes aimed at improving usability, but still keeping with the minimal design of the original library.

License

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the MIT license. See LICENSE for details.

Supported format variants

No effort has been put into handling every tar format variant. Basically what is accepted is the "old-style" format, which appears to work well enough to access basic archives created by GNU tar.

Basic usage

The library consists of two files, microtar.c and microtar.h, which only depend on a tiny part of the standard C library & can be easily incorporated into a host project's build system.

The core library does not include any I/O hooks as these are supposed to be provided by the host application. If the C library's fopen and friends is good enough, you can use microtar-stdio.c.

Initialization

Initialization is very simple. Everything the library needs is contained in the mtar_t struct; there is no memory allocation and no global state. It is enough to zero-initialize an mtar_t object to put it into a "closed" state. You can use mtar_is_open() to query whether the archive is open or not.

An archive can be opened for reading or writing, but not both. You have to specify which access mode you're using when you create the archive.

mtar_t tar;
mtar_init(&tar, MTAR_READ, my_io_ops, my_stream);

Or if using microtar-stdio.c:

int error = mtar_open(&tar, "file.tar", "rb");
if(error) {
    /* do something about it */
}

Note that mtar_init() is called for you in this case and the access mode is deduced from the mode flags.

Iterating and locating files

If you opened an archive for reading, you'll likely want to iterate over all the files. Here's the long way of doing it:

mtar_t tar;
int err;

/* Go to the start of the archive... Not necessary if you've
 * just opened the archive and are already at the beginning.
 * (And of course you normally want to check the return value.) */
mtar_rewind(&tar);

/* Iterate over the archive members */
while((err = mtar_next(&tar)) == MTAR_ESUCCESS) {
    /* Get a pointer to the current file header. It will
     * remain valid until you move to another record with
     * mtar_next() or call mtar_rewind() */
    const mtar_header_t* header = mtar_get_header(&tar);

    printf("%s (%d bytes)\n", header->name, header->size);
}

if(err != MTAR_ENULLRECORD) {
    /* ENULLRECORD means we hit end of file; any
     * other return value is an actual error. */
}

There's a useful shortcut for this type of iteration which removes the loop boilerplate, replacing it with another kind of boilerplate that may be more palatable in some cases.

/* Will be called for each archive member visited by mtar_foreach().
 * The member's header is passed in as an argument so you don't need
 * to fetch it manually with mtar_get_header(). You can freely read
 * data (if present) and seek around. There is no special cleanup
 * required and it is not necessary to read to the end of the stream.
 *
 * The callback should return zero (= MTAR_SUCCESS) to continue the
 * iteration or return nonzero to abort. On abort, the value returned
 * by the callback will be returned from mtar_foreach(). Since it may
 * also return normal microtar error codes, it is suggested to use a
 * positive value or pass the result via 'arg'.
 */
int foreach_cb(mtar_t* tar, const mtar_header_t* header, void* arg)
{
    // ...
    return 0;
}

void main()
{
    mtar_t tar;

    // ...

    int ret = mtar_foreach(&tar, foreach_cb, NULL);
    if(ret < 0) {
        /* Microtar error codes are negative and may be returned if
         * there is a problem with the iteration. */
    } else if(ret == MTAR_ESUCCESS) {
        /* If the iteration reaches the end of the archive without
         * errors, the return code is MTAR_ESUCCESS. */
    } else if(ret > 0) {
        /* Positive values might be returned by the callback to
         * signal some condition was met; they'll never be returned
         * by microtar */
    }
}

The other thing you're likely to do is look for a specific file:

/* Seek to a specific member in the archive */
int err = mtar_find(&tar, "foo.txt");
if(err == MTAR_ESUCCESS) {
    /* File was found -- read the header with mtar_get_header() */
} else if(err == MTAR_ENOTFOUND) {
    /* File wasn't in the archive */
} else {
    /* Some error occurred */
}

Note this isn't terribly efficient since it scans the entire archive looking for the file.

Reading file data

Once pointed at a file via mtar_next() or mtar_find() you can read the data with a simple POSIX-like API.

• mtar_read_data(tar, buf, count) reads up to count bytes into buf, returning the actual number of bytes read, or a negative error value. If at EOF, this returns zero.

• mtar_seek_data(tar, offset, whence) works exactly like fseek() with whence being one of SEEK_SET, SEEK_CUR, or SEEK_END and offset indicating a point relative to the beginning, current position, or end of the file. Returns zero on success, or a negative error code.

• mtar_eof_data(tar) returns nonzero if the end of the file has been reached. It is possible to seek backward to clear this condition.

Writing archives

Microtar has limited support for creating archives. When an archive is opened for writing, you can add new members using mtar_write_header().

• mtar_write_header(tar, header) writes out the header for a new member. The amount of data that follows is dictated by header->size, though if the underlying stream supports seeking and re-writing data, this size can be updated later with mtar_update_header() or mtar_update_file_size().

• mtar_update_header(tar, header) will re-write the previously written header. This may be used to change any header field. The underlying stream must support seeking. On a successful return the stream will be returned to the position it was at before the call.

File data can be written with mtar_write_data(), and if the underlying stream supports seeking, you can seek with mtar_seek_data() and read back previously written data with mtar_read_data(). Note that it is not possible to truncate the file stream by any means.

• mtar_write_data(tar, buf, count) will write up to count bytes from buf to the current member's data. Returns the number of bytes actually written or a negative error code.

• mtar_update_file_size(tar) will update the header size to reflect the actual amount of written data. This is intended to be called right before mtar_end_data() if you are not declaring file sizes in advance.

• mtar_end_data(tar) will end the current member. It will complain if you did not write the correct amount data provided in the header. This must be called before writing the next header.

• mtar_finalize(tar) is called after you have written all members to the archive. It writes out some null records which mark the end of the archive, so you cannot write any more archive members after this.

Note that mtar_close() can fail if there was a problem flushing buffered data to disk, so its return value should always be checked.

Error handling

Most functions that return int return an error code from enum mtar_error. Zero is success and all other error codes are negative. mtar_strerror() can return a string describing the error code.

A couple of functions use a different return value convention:

• mtar_foreach() may error codes or an arbitrary nonzero value provided by the callback.
• mtar_read_data() and mtar_write_data() returns the number of bytes read or written, or a negative error code. In particular zero means that no bytes were read or written.
• mtar_get_header() may return NULL if there is no valid header. It is only possible to see a null pointer if misusing the API or after a previous error so checking for this is usually not necessary.

There is essentially no support for error recovery. After an error you can only do two things reliably: close the archive with mtar_close() or try rewinding to the beginning with mtar_rewind().

I/O hooks

You can provide your own I/O hooks in a mtar_ops_t struct. The same ops struct can be shared among multiple mtar_t objects but each object gets its own void* stream pointer.

Name	Arguments	Required
read	void* stream, void* data, unsigned size	If reading
write	void* stream, void* data, unsigned size	If writing
seek	void* stream, unsigned pos	If reading
close	void* stream	Always

read and write should transfer the number of bytes indicated and return the number of bytes actually read or written, or a negative enum mtar_error code on error.

seek must have semantics like lseek(..., pos, SEEK_SET); that is, the position is an absolute byte offset in the stream. Seeking is not optional for read support, but the library only performs backward seeks under two circumstances:

• mtar_rewind() seeks to position 0.
• mtar_seek_data() may seek backward if the user requests it.

Therefore, you will be able to get away with a limited forward-only seek function if you're able to read everything in a single pass use the API carefully. Note mtar_find() and mtar_foreach() will call mtar_rewind().

close is called by mtar_close() to clean up the stream. Note the library assumes that the stream handle is cleaned up by close even if an error occurs.

seek and close should return an enum mtar_error code, either MTAR_SUCCESS, or a negative value on error.