NAME

       Arch::Tarball - an interface to create and work with tarballs

SYNOPSIS

           use Arch::Tarball

           my $tarball = Arch::Tarball->new;
           my $pipe = $tarball->create(
               dir => '/path/to/subdir-to-pack',
               base_name => 'new-subdir-to-pack',
               pipe => 1,
           );

DESCRIPTION

       Arch::Tarball provides an object oriented interface to work with (create, examine or
       extract) standard gzipped tarballs.

       Note: As functionality is added only when needed, a lot of features are currently not
       implemented.

METHODS

       The following functions are available:

       new, create, extract, list.

       new %opts
           Creates a new Arch::Tarball object.

           The following parameters can be set via %opts:

           tar The name of the tar executable. Defaults to "tar".

           file
               The filename of the Tarball.

       create %opts
           Creates a new tarball (tar.gz) from a given directory structure.

           create understands the following options:

           dir (mandatory)
               Specifies the base directory for the tarball. The given directory and recursively
               its content will be added to the tarball. The directory's basename will be used as
               the first and the only subdirectory in the tarball.

           base_name
               Allow the programmer to specify a different base directory name for the tarball
               content than the basename of dir. In this case, 'cp' process is launched to
               temporarily rename the last element of dir.

           pipe
               When set, create does not create a physical tarball but writes the tarballs
               content to a newly created pipe. The pipe is returned by the create method.

           Note: Currently the pipe option is mandatory.

       extract %opts
           Extracts the tarball to a given target directory, specified by dir option.  If dir
           option is not given, a temporary directory is created that will hold the extracted
           dirs/files. This directory is returned.

           The file option specifies the tarball file name. It may be given in the constructor
           instead.

       list %opts (not implemented yet)
           Returns a list of files and directories in the tarball.

BUGS

       Most functionality is currently not implemented. If you need part of the missing
       functionality, please contact the authors.

       Patches are greatly appreciated.

AUTHORS

       Mikhael Goikhman (migo@homemail.com--Perl-GPL/arch-perl--devel).

       Enno Cramer (uebergeek@web.de--2003/arch-perl--devel).