tar format alternative

Question

I need to archive multiple files using ruby, but I need to archive them in such way that they could be extracted without using my script (so I need popular format).

Problems with tar are max file length and problems with random file access while writing tar.

Good pure ruby library or ruby binding is highly desirable.

Built-in compression would be a good addition (so i don't need to use zlib ruby binding around archiving).

Answer 1

Ruby Zip is very stable, we use it to allow users to download bundles of images.

Answer 2

So why not just use something like this

`tar -czf myarchive.tgz myfiles/*`

from inside of your ruby script? If they have the executable to extract the files, surely they have a command line tar executable.