The source distribution includes the libarchive library, the bsdtar and bsdcpio command-line programs, full test suite, and documentation:

• Stable release: libarchive-3.0.3.tar.gz libarchive-3.0.3.zip (since Jan 12, 2012)
• Legacy release: libarchive-2.8.5.tar.gz libarchive-2.8.5.zip (since Sept 3, 2011)

The libarchive library features:

• Support for a variety of archive and compression formats.
• Robust automatic format detection, including archive/compression combinations such as tar.gz.
• Zero-copy internal architecture for high performance.
• Streaming architecture eliminates all limits on size of archive, limits on entry sizes depend on particular formats.
• Carefully factored code to minimize bloat when programs are statically linked.
• Growing test suite to verify correctness of new ports.
• Works on most POSIX-like systems (including FreeBSD, Linux, Solaris, etc.)
• Supports Windows, including Cygwin, MinGW, and Visual Studio.

The bsdtar and bscpio command-line utilities are feature- and performance-competitive with other tar and cpio implementations:

• Reads a variety of formats, including tar, pax, cpio, zip, xar, lha, ar, cab, mtree, rar, and ISO images.
• Writes tar, pax, cpio, zip, xar, ar, ISO, mtree, and shar archives.
• Automatically handles archives compressed with gzip, bzip2, lzip, xz, lzma, or compress.
• Unique format conversion feature.

This site includes:

• Build Instructions
• Examples of using the library
• Formats supported by the library
• Documentation included in the distribution
• Libarchive Users
• Release Notes
• Ideas for people who want to contribute