Feature request: Tar compression

[szepeviktor]

Is it possible to gzip-compress tar output?

[johnmaguire]

I will have to look into whether this is even possible while keeping memory usage low. I think that it theoretically should be as gzip compression is a sliding window compression algorithm if I'm not mistaken, but I'm not sure how much work this would be to implement.

[szepeviktor]

Thank you!

[szepeviktor]

@johnmaguire Please consider encryption also. I think if you can compress a stream then it should be possible to encrypt it.
I think encryption is essential for public Internet traffic.

[johnmaguire]

Encryption for the web is typically done via SSL. As far as creating password-protected ZIP files goes, there's no plan for that.

[szepeviktor]

In case of cheap websites "everyone" in transit will see raw data.

[szepeviktor]

Could you point out in the code where to apply encryption?

[johnmaguire]

You would have to implement it according to the spec layed out here in the zipstream.php file for ZIPs. As far as tars go, I don't think there is anything in the spec as far as encryption goes as it's just a container format. Even if we implemented the ability to create .tar.gz's, gzip is just a compression format.

[johnmaguire]

@szepeviktor You might be interested in Let's Encrypt if money is an issue for SSL certificates. They are a vendor offering free certificates.

[szepeviktor]

Thank you very much.
I am a StartSSL user.