You're viewing a single thread.
most of the things i want to send around my network in archives are already compressed binary files, so i just tar everything.
You reinvented zip and didn't even know it.
tarwas nearly and adult whenzipwas born.See my reply here: https://midwest.social/comment/10257041
The two aren't really equivalent. They make different tradeoffs. The scheme of "compress individual files, then archive" from GP is what zip does. Tar does "archive first, then compress the whole thing".
The link does not load for some reason, but tar itself does not compress anything. Compression can (and usually is) applied afterwards, but that's an additional integration that is not part of Tape ARchive, as such.
Yes, I'm aware of how this works.
The important point is that zip and compressed tarballs have overlapping but not identical purposes.