tarball

tarball
 n.

   [very common; prob. based on the "tar baby" in the Uncle Remus folk
   tales] An archive, created with the Unix tar(1) utility, containing
   myriad related files. "Here, I'll just ftp you a tarball of the whole
   project." Tarballs have been the standard way to ship around
   source-code distributions since the mid-1980s; in retrospect it seems
   odd that this term did not enter common usage until the late 1990s.
    

tar
tape archive
tarball

   <file format> ("Tape ARchive", following {ar}) {Unix}'s
   general purpose {archive} utility and the file format it uses.
   Tar was originally intended for use with {magnetic tape} but,
   though it has several {command line options} related to tape,
   it is now used more often for packaging files together on
   other media, e.g. for distribution via the {Internet}.

   The resulting archive, a "tar file" (humourously, "tarball")
   is often compressed, using {gzip} or some other form of
   compression (see {tar and feather}).

   There is a {GNU} version of tar called {gnutar} with several
   improvements over the standard versions.

   {Filename extension}: .tar

   {MIME type}: unregistered, but commonly application/x-tar

   {Unix manual page}: tar(1).

   Compare {shar}, {zip}.

   (1998-05-02)