Investigate `node-tar`, `tar-fs`, `tar-stream` and `archiver`

[ayuhito]

Overview

The tar libraries have a lot of dependencies that can stripped away.

• node-tar: 5 dependencies (2MB unpacked)
• tar-stream: 6 dependencies (232KB unpacked)
• tar-fs: 11 dependencies (264KB unpacked) -> built on tar-stream and a bunch of other older deps like pump.
• archiver: 66 dependencies (10MB unpacked)
  • This one only applies if the consumer only uses archiver for tar such as testcontainers-node. It doesn't apply to every package it is used in, but arguably is the most effective to replace.

All of these packages are heavily used and can drastically reduce dependency counts if an alternative is used. Also none of the above supports the browser natively or can be very difficult to work with in environments like Cloudflare Workers.

Known Alternatives

• nanotar - Very tiny, very fast. Ideal for most simple scenarios but does not support streaming or filesystem operations.
• modern-tar - Bigger alternative to the above, but also supports streaming and has filesystem utilities.
  • I made this package as I needed streaming and filesystem bindings, but it still lacks adoption.

Both have zero dependencies and is cross-platform supporting the browser or other environments.

[mrginglymus]

storybookjs/storybook#32763