= minitar

home :: https://github.com/halostatue/minitar/
code :: https://github.com/halostatue/minitar/
bugs :: https://github.com/halostatue/minitar/issues
rdoc :: https://rdoc.info/gems/minitar/
cli  :: https://github.com/halostatue/minitar-cli

== Description

The minitar library is a pure-Ruby library that provides the ability to deal
with POSIX tar(1) archive files.

This is release 0.12. This is likely the last revision before 1.0.

minitar (previously called Archive::Tar::Minitar) is based heavily on code
originally written by Mauricio Julio Fernández Pradier for the rpa-base
project.

== Synopsis

Using minitar is easy. The simplest case is:

  require 'minitar'

  # Packs everything that matches Find.find('tests').
  # test.tar will automatically be closed by Minitar.pack.
  Minitar.pack('tests', File.open('test.tar', 'wb'))

  # Unpacks 'test.tar' to 'x', creating 'x' if necessary.
  Minitar.unpack('test.tar', 'x')

A gzipped tar can be written with:

  require 'zlib'
  # test.tgz will be closed automatically.
  Minitar.pack('tests', Zlib::GzipWriter.new(File.open('test.tgz', 'wb'))

  # test.tgz will be closed automatically.
  Minitar.unpack(Zlib::GzipReader.new(File.open('test.tgz', 'rb')), 'x')

As the case above shows, one need not write to a file. However, it will
sometimes require that one dive a little deeper into the API, as in the case of
StringIO objects. Note that I'm not providing a block with Minitar::Output, as
Minitar::Output#close automatically closes both the Output object and the
wrapped data stream object.

  begin
    sgz = Zlib::GzipWriter.new(StringIO.new(String.new))
    tar = Output.new(sgz)
    Find.find('tests') do |entry|
      Minitar.pack_file(entry, tar)
    end
  ensure
      # Closes both tar and sgz.
    tar.close
  end

== Minitar and Security

Minitar aims to be secure by default for the data *inside* of a tarfile. If
there are any security issues discovered, please feel free to open an issue.
Should you wish to make a more confidential report, you can find my PGP key
information at {Keybase}[https://keybase.io/halostatue]. Bear with me: I do not
use PGP regularly, so it may take some time to remember the command invocations
required to successfully handle this.

Minitar does *not* perform validation of path names provided to the convenience
calsses Minitar::Output and Minitar::Input, which use Kernel.open for their
underlying implementations when not given an IO-like object.

Improper use of these classes with arbitrary input filenames may leave your
your software to the same class of vulnerability as reported for Net::FTP
({CVE-2017-17405}[https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2017-17405]). Of
particular note, "if the localfile argument starts with the '|' pipe character,
the command following the pipe character is executed."

Additionally, the use of the `open-uri` library (which extends Kernel.open with
transparent implementations of Net::HTTP, Net::HTTPS, and Net::FTP), there are
other possible vulnerabilities when accepting arbitrary input, as
{detailed}[https://sakurity.com/blog/2015/02/28/openuri.html] by Egor Homakov.

These security vulnerabilities may be avoided, even with the Minitar::Output
and Minitar::Input convenience classes, by providing IO-like objects instead of
pathname-like objects as the source or destination of these classes.

== minitar Semantic Versioning

The minitar library uses a {Semantic Versioning}[http://semver.org/] scheme
with one change:

* When PATCH is zero (+0+), it will be omitted from version references.
