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man pages section 3: Extended Library Functions, Volume 1

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Updated: Wednesday, July 27, 2022
 
 

archive_write (3archive)

Name

archive_write - functions for creating archives

Synopsis

#include <archive.h>

Description

ARCHIVE_WRITE(3archive)                                ARCHIVE_WRITE(3archive)



NAME
       archive_write - functions for creating archives

LIBRARY
       Streaming Archive Library (libarchive, -larchive)

SYNOPSIS
       #include <archive.h>

DESCRIPTION
       These functions provide a complete API for creating streaming archive
       files.  The general process is to first create the Tn struct archive
       object, set any desired options, initialize the archive, append
       entries, then close the archive and release all resources.

   Create archive object
       See archive_write_new(3).

       To write an archive, you must first obtain an initialized Tn struct ar-
       chive object from archive_write_new().

   Enable filters and formats, configure block size and padding
       See archive_write_filter(3), archive_write_format(3) and ar-
       chive_write_blocksize(3).

       You can then modify this object for the desired operations with the
       various archive_write_set_XXX() functions.  In particular, you will
       need to invoke appropriate archive_write_add_XXX() and
       archive_write_set_XXX() functions to enable the corresponding compres-
       sion and format support.

   Set options
       See archive_write_set_options(3).

   Open archive
       See archive_write_open(3).

       Once you have prepared the Tn struct archive object, you call
       archive_write_open() to actually open the archive and prepare it for
       writing.  There are several variants of this function; the most basic
       expects you to provide pointers to several functions that can provide
       blocks of bytes from the archive.  There are convenience forms that
       allow you to specify a filename, file descriptor, FILE * object, or a
       block of memory from which to write the archive data.

   Produce archive
       See archive_write_header(3) and archive_write_data(3).

       Individual archive entries are written in a three-step process: You
       first initialize a Tn struct archive_entry structure with information
       about the new entry.  At a minimum, you should set the pathname of the
       entry and provide a struct stat with a valid st_mode field, which spec-
       ifies the type of object and st_size field, which specifies the size of
       the data portion of the object.

   Release resources
       See archive_write_free(3).

       After all entries have been written, use the archive_write_free() func-
       tion to release all resources.

EXAMPLES
       The following sketch illustrates basic usage of the library.  In this
       example, the callback functions are simply wrappers around the standard
       open(2), write(2), and close(2) system calls.
           #ifdef __linux__
           #define   _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64
           #endif
           #include <sys/stat.h>
           #include <archive.h>
           #include <archive_entry.h>
           #include <fcntl.h>
           #include <stdlib.h>
           #include <unistd.h>
           struct mydata {
             const char *name;
             int fd;
           };
           int
           myopen(struct archive *a, void *client_data)
           {
             struct mydata *mydata = client_data;
             mydata->fd = open(mydata->name, O_WRONLY | O_CREAT, 0644);
             if (mydata->fd >= 0)
               return (ARCHIVE_OK);
             else
               return (ARCHIVE_FATAL);
           }
           la_ssize_t
           mywrite(struct archive *a, void *client_data, const void *buff, size_t n)
           {
             struct mydata *mydata = client_data;
             return (write(mydata->fd, buff, n));
           }
           int
           myclose(struct archive *a, void *client_data)
           {
             struct mydata *mydata = client_data;
             if (mydata->fd > 0)
               close(mydata->fd);
             return (0);
           }
           void
           write_archive(const char *outname, const char **filename)
           {
             struct mydata *mydata = malloc(sizeof(struct mydata));
             struct archive *a;
             struct archive_entry *entry;
             struct stat st;
             char buff[8192];
             int len;
             int fd;
             a = archive_write_new();
             mydata->name = outname;
             /* Set archive format and filter according to output file extension.
              * If it fails, set default format. Platform depended function.
              * See supported formats in archive_write_set_format_filter_by_ext.c */
             if (archive_write_set_format_filter_by_ext(a, outname) != ARCHIVE_OK)  {
               archive_write_add_filter_gzip(a);
               archive_write_set_format_ustar(a);
             }
             archive_write_open(a, mydata, myopen, mywrite, myclose);
             while (*filename) {
               stat(*filename, &st);
               entry = archive_entry_new();
               archive_entry_copy_stat(entry, &st);
               archive_entry_set_pathname(entry, *filename);
               archive_write_header(a, entry);
               if ((fd = open(*filename, O_RDONLY)) != -1) {
                 len = read(fd, buff, sizeof(buff));
                 while (len > 0) {
                   archive_write_data(a, buff, len);
                   len = read(fd, buff, sizeof(buff));
                 }
                 close(fd);
               }
               archive_entry_free(entry);
               filename++;
             }
             archive_write_free(a);
           }
           int main(int argc, const char **argv)
           {
             const char *outname;
             argv++;
             outname = *argv++;
             write_archive(outname, argv);
             return 0;
           }


ATTRIBUTES
       See attributes(7) for descriptions of the following attributes:


       +---------------+--------------------+
       |ATTRIBUTE TYPE |  ATTRIBUTE VALUE   |
       +---------------+--------------------+
       |Availability   | library/libarchive |
       +---------------+--------------------+
       |Stability      | Uncommitted        |
       +---------------+--------------------+

SEE ALSO
       tar(1), archive_write_set_options(3), libarchive(3), mtree(5)

HISTORY
       The libarchive library first appeared in FreeBSD 5.3.

AUTHORS
       -nosplit The libarchive library was written by Tim Kientzle
       <kientzle@acm.org.>

BUGS
       There are many peculiar bugs in historic tar implementations that may
       cause certain programs to reject archives written by this library.  For
       example, several historic implementations calculated header checksums
       incorrectly and will thus reject valid archives; GNU tar does not fully
       support pax interchange format; some old tar implementations required
       specific field terminations.

       The default pax interchange format eliminates most of the historic tar
       limitations and provides a generic key/value attribute facility for
       vendor-defined extensions.  One oversight in POSIX is the failure to
       provide a standard attribute for large device numbers.  This library
       uses ``SCHILY.devminor'' and ``SCHILY.devmajor'' for device numbers
       that exceed the range supported by the backwards-compatible ustar
       header.  These keys are compatible with Joerg Schilling's star
       archiver.  Other implementations may not recognize these keys and will
       thus be unable to correctly restore device nodes with large device num-
       bers from archives created by this library.



NOTES
       Source code for open source software components in Oracle Solaris can
       be found at https://www.oracle.com/downloads/opensource/solaris-source-
       code-downloads.html.

       This software was built from source available at
       https://github.com/oracle/solaris-userland.  The original community
       source was downloaded from
       https://github.com/libarchive/libarchive/releases/down-
       load/v3.6.1/libarchive-3.6.1.tar.gz.

       Further information about this software can be found on the open source
       community website at http://www.libarchive.org/.



                               February 2, 2012        ARCHIVE_WRITE(3archive)