libarchive is a free and open-source library for reading and writing various archive and compression formats.

[6] libarchive is designed to minimize the copying of data internally for optimal performance.

[7] Supported archive formats:[8] libarchive provides command-line utilities called bsdtar and bsdcpio.

[11] libarchive was originally developed for FreeBSD, but is also used in NetBSD and macOS as part of those operating systems.

[12] In May 2023, Microsoft announced Windows 11 will natively support additional archive formats such as 7z and RAR via libarchive.