# Install libarchive with Homebrew

Multi-format archive and compression library. Version 3.8.9 via Homebrew; verified from local package data.

## Install

```sh
sudo av install brew:libarchive
```

Additional install commands:

### macOS

- Homebrew (100%):

```sh
brew install libarchive
```

  Evidence: provider-native install command

## Package facts

- **Package key:** brew:libarchive
- **Package manager:** Homebrew
- **Version:** 3.8.9
- **Source summary:** Multi-format archive and compression library
- **Homepage:** <https://www.libarchive.org>
- **Generated:** 2026-08-03T00:40:33+00:00

## Executables

- bsdcat (alias)
- bsdcpio (alias)
- bsdtar (alias)
- bsdunzip (alias)

## Install behavior

- Bottle: not available

## Freshness

- Page generated: 2026-08-03
- Package-manager version: 3.8.9
## Project history and usage

libarchive is a portable C library and command-line tool suite for reading and writing many archive formats. It ships bsdtar, bsdcpio, bsdcat, and bsdunzip, making it both a developer library and a practical Unix toolbox package.

### Project history

The project began in the FreeBSD orbit and was first released in 2006, according to its own libarchive 3.0 transition notes. Its design emphasized streaming, automatic format detection, and a single API that could handle tar, cpio, zip, ISO images, compression filters, and later many more formats.

### Adoption history

libarchive spread widely because packaging systems, installers, build tools, and OS utilities all need to unpack archives without shelling out to a pile of format-specific programs. Its bsdtar and bsdcpio utilities became FreeBSD-associated alternatives to GNU tar and cpio, while the library itself was packaged across Linux, macOS, BSD, and Windows-oriented environments.

### How it is used

Applications link libarchive to read and write archives through one API, while users run bsdtar, bsdcpio, bsdcat, or bsdunzip. The project site emphasizes automatic handling of archive-plus-compression combinations such as tar.gz and support for POSIX-like systems plus Windows.

### Why package nerds care

libarchive is one of those packages that quietly makes package managers work. Its importance is in boring reliability: many archive formats, many platforms, a test suite, and CLI tools that can replace multiple single-format utilities.

### Timeline

- 2006: libarchive was first released.
- 2011-12: libarchive 3.0 was released after nearly two years of development since 2.8.
- 2016-04-30: libarchive 3.2.0 added bsdcat, LZ4, WARC, raw writer, and ZIP64-related features.
- 2018-09-03: libarchive 3.3.3 included Zstandard read and write filters.
- 2023-07-14: the project recorded a bsdunzip port from FreeBSD in NEWS.

### Related projects

- Related projects include FreeBSD tar and cpio tooling, GNU tar, Info-ZIP, zlib, bzip2, xz, lz4, zstd, archive-consuming package managers, and installers.

### Sources

- <https://github.com/libarchive/libarchive>
- <https://github.com/libarchive/libarchive/blob/master/NEWS>
- <https://github.com/libarchive/libarchive/wiki>
- <https://github.com/libarchive/libarchive/wiki/Libarchive3>
- <https://github.com/libarchive/libarchive/wiki/ReleaseNotes>
- <https://www.libarchive.org>


## Security Notes

library-like package without higher-risk signals.

- **Geiger risk:** green / low
- library-like package without higher-risk signals


## Combined YAML source

View the package source record on GitHub. [combined/libarchive.yml](https://github.com/automic-vault/db/blob/main/combined/libarchive.yml)


## Sources

- Nucleus package database
- Geiger risk classifier
- curated package history
- pkgdb category and tag curation