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libarchive

brew install libarchive v3.8.7 BSD-2-Clause keg-only

C library and CLI tools for reading and writing tar, cpio, zip, ISO, and other archive formats.

Why you might care

libarchive is the de facto standard for cross-platform archive handling; it's faster and more format-comprehensive than many language standard libraries. Homebrew's own formula management depends on it, and it's keg-only because macOS ships a version—use this if you need newer features, better performance, or explicit control over compression backends (libb2, lz4, xz, zstd).

Categories

library archiver compression

Alternatives

tar zip 7z bsdtar
37.1k
30-day installs · #166
141.1k
90-day · #149
709.8k
365-day · #93

Runtime dependencies

libb2 lz4 xz zstd

Links

Keg-only reason

:provided_by_macos

Blurb generated by claude-haiku-4-5 on today.

Raw metadata 
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  "why_use_this": "libarchive is the de facto standard for cross-platform archive handling; it\u0027s faster and more format-comprehensive than many language standard libraries. Homebrew\u0027s own formula management depends on it, and it\u0027s keg-only because macOS ships a version\u2014use this if you need newer features, better performance, or explicit control over compression backends (libb2, lz4, xz, zstd)."
}