From 0e69c510e4c54796f7ccf7bae214145c7911328e Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: minfrin Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2016 19:01:57 +0200 Subject: [PATCH] Update the basic readme. --- README.md | 19 +++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 19 insertions(+) diff --git a/README.md b/README.md index 5b2ebd9..7883c2d 100644 --- a/README.md +++ b/README.md @@ -1,2 +1,21 @@ # tarmux A tool to multiplex and demultiplex streams from pipes to tar and back again. + +Tarmux attempts to solve the problem of handling streamed data where there +is insufficient temporary space on disk to hold the data, as is forced by +tar. + +In the simplest invocation, tarmux takes a stream from stdin, and creates +a tar file consisting of sequential numbered file fragments one after the +other. This can be reversed by the tardemux tool, which will untar the +fragments and reassemble the stream to stdout. + +The tardemux tool only reads a single tar stream before exiting. This allows +multiple streams to be concatenated in the same stream, and then split out +by each invocation of tardemux. + +# about tarmux + +Tarmux is written for speed in portable C, and is tested on MacOSX, Redhat +and Ubuntu. Tar mux depends on libarchive http://www.libarchive.org/. +Packaging is available for RPM and Debian/Ubuntu systems.