WTF is TAR?

maxgamer · Post by **maxgamer** » February 21st, 2008, 4:27 pm

sorry, but i currently have version 1.2.7 and tried downloading the newest version so i can get better mods and stuff, but after i saved it to my computer and everything, it just showed up on my desktop as "version whatever.tar". my question is what is a tar file and how do i fix this? did i download it wrong, did i skip something, do i have to do something else? thanks for the replies

Aethaeryn (User Page) · Post by **Aethaeryn** » February 21st, 2008, 4:32 pm

You probably downloaded the wrong version (the source) so unless you have a compiler, you want the .exe file. Try this for 1.3.18.

Post by AI » February 21st, 2008, 4:33 pm

tar is an archive format (TAR = Tape Archiver), somewhat similar to ZIP.

to open it on windows, use 7zip

but, if you got yourself a tarball, you probably downloaded the sources rather than the windows binaries

longhair · Post by **longhair** » February 21st, 2008, 4:35 pm

TAR = Tape ARchive

Also known as tarballs. They usually are in a file like: filename.tar.gz or filename.bz2

Basically, it's a way of bundling a bunch of files of folders together. Sort of like ZIP. If you've never heard of it before, I'm guessing that you're either a Windows user who clicked on the wrong link, or are new to the Mac or Linux platforms.

If you're on Linux, I'd get either the Deb package, or the RPM for your system.

Not knowing diddly about Macintosh, you'll have to ask elsewhere if that's your situation.

longhair · Post by **longhair** » February 21st, 2008, 4:36 pm

Hehe, 3 replies at once.

maxgamer · Post by **maxgamer** » February 21st, 2008, 4:49 pm

yea, im a windows user, i've heard of zip files but not tar. Aethaeryn, ill try getting it from your source when i get home. i guess what happenned was i clicked on download 1.3.18 from the main page and when it led me to some other site i didnt think it was working because i didnt see anything happening, it said if it wasnt working to download from this directsource, that must be the tar thing. thanks a lot everyone, glad i learned something and most of all that i will be playing on version 1.3.18 by tonight, yay!

Post by **torangan** » February 21st, 2008, 8:00 pm

Just to be technically correct: tar does *not* compress. The only thing tar does it to combine files and directories into one file. That is then compressed with gzip (gz), bzip2 (bz2) or 7-zip (7z) usually. So .tar.gz / .tgz are tar + gzip and so on. Does compression formats support only a single file as input and tar does the other part of the work.

energyman76c · Post by **energyman76c** » February 23rd, 2008, 3:33 am

also tar is older then most OS

it was created in the 70s.

almost every archiver on windows/mac should be able to deal with tar files (tar.bz2 = tbz. tar.gz = tgz). winzip, winrar, 7zip you name it. Everything that can unpack more than its own formate should be able to deal with tar.

But one correction: tar does more than just shoving a bunch of files into one. type man tar and be shocked

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tar_(file_format) has also some info.

And yes, I use it with tape drives

Post by **torangan** » February 23rd, 2008, 1:53 pm

I know that tar can do lots of stuff but in your typical tgz it won't do much.

maxgamer · Post by **maxgamer** » February 26th, 2008, 4:24 pm

alright, so i clicked on your patch Aethaeryn, which was just the same thing from the main menu. but when it says that it's downloading, is it really downloading? because i let it just sit there for about 45 minutes and it still wasnt done. i did notice a folder on my desktop that must be what was downloading, but how long does it take?

Post by AI » February 26th, 2008, 4:30 pm

It's over 100MB, so it can take a while.

There is a new version out though: 1.3.19

mowerpower · Post by **mowerpower** » February 29th, 2008, 1:07 pm

Something to be aware of using tar on windows: tar assumes unix file structure & allow representations of symbolic links and hard links. FAT32 allows hard links but not symlinks; NTFS was the same until Vista.

Incidentally HFS+ doesn't support hard links, one of the reasons, no doubt, Torvalds called the FS "utter crap". But OS X abstracts away from this defect in a more or less OK manner, and tar generally works fine on OS X.

Post by **Dave** » February 29th, 2008, 4:45 pm

mowerpower wrote:Something to be aware of using tar on windows: tar assumes unix file structure & allow representations of symbolic links and hard links. FAT32 allows hard links but not symlinks; NTFS was the same until Vista.

I really don't know that much about it, but I thought that FAT supported symlinks ('shortcuts') but not hardlinks. No?

mowerpower · Post by **mowerpower** » February 29th, 2008, 4:52 pm

Dave wrote:
mowerpower wrote:Something to be aware of using tar on windows: tar assumes unix file structure & allow representations of symbolic links and hard links. FAT32 allows hard links but not symlinks; NTFS was the same until Vista.
I really don't know that much about it, but I thought that FAT supported symlinks ('shortcuts') but not hardlinks. No?

No. As I understand it, shortcuts are not part of the FS, but instead are part of the GUI layer that Explorer and some other applications can recognise. To the FS they are just ordinary files, just like Aliases in OS X/HFS+.

The Wikipedia article on "Symbolic links" is pretty good; it's worth checking out.

You can see what FAT32 is capable of from the comfort of your own linux system by mounting a FAT32 fs and mucking about with it.

Post by VS » February 29th, 2008, 6:15 pm

Windows shortcuts are shell stuff, just files.

NTFS can do hardlinks and all, and with Vista these features are "complete", although some worked even before if you knew how to activate them...