filtar 0.2.0

Partially compress and extract tar archives

filtar

Minimal Python extension for fast tar file creation and extraction written in Rust.

[!IMPORTANT] This module exists solely for MineDelta and is tailored to its needs. It is not a general-purpose replacement for tarfile.

Constraints

• Only supports Zstandard-compressed tar archives
• Error handling is very bare-bones (io errors are just passed through without details)
• Behavior is intentionally limited and opinionated

API

extract(src: StrPath, dest: StrPath, exclude: Iterable[StrPath] | None = None) -> None

Extract archive to dest.

• exclude: paths to skip; matching entries and their contents (if directories) are excluded
• Creates dest if needed

---

create(src: StrPath, dest: StrPath, exclude: Set[str] = ... , n_workers: int = 0, level: int = 0) -> None

Create archive from src.

• exclude: set of file/directory names to skip (not paths)
• n_workers: number of workers to use
• level: compression level
• Recursively archives contents
• Does not follow symlinks

Notes

• exclude is similar to tarfile’s filtering, but only skips entries
• The GIL is released as much as possible
• Extraction uses path-based exclusion, creation uses name-based exclusion
• No support for other compression formats or advanced tar features

Use

If you are not working on MineDelta, consider using fastar instead. It provides a more general-purpose interface to the same underlying Rust tar crate, supports multiple compression formats (including transparent detection), but does not support partial extraction/creation and does not release the GIL.