# 11.9 `distutils.archive_util` -- Archiving utilities

This module provides a few functions for creating archive files, such as tarballs or zipfiles.

`make_archive`( | base_name, format[, root_dir=`None`, base_dir=`None`, verbose=`0`, dry_run=`0`])

  Create an archive file (eg. `zip` or `tar`). base_name is the name of the file to create, minus any format-specific extension; format is the archive format: one of `zip`, `tar`, `ztar`, or `gztar`. root_dir is a directory that will be the root directory of the archive; ie. we typically `chdir` into root_dir before creating the archive. base_dir is the directory where we start archiving from; ie. base_dir will be the common prefix of all files and directories in the archive. root_dir and base_dir both default to the current directory. Returns the name of the archive file.

  Warning: This should be changed to support bz2 files

`make_tarball`( | base_name, base_dir[, compress=`'gzip'`, verbose=`0`, dry_run=`0`])

  'Create an (optional compressed) archive as a tar file from all files in and under base_dir. compress must be `'gzip'` (the default), `'compress'`, `'bzip2'`, or `None`. Both tar and the compression utility named by compress must be on the default program search path, so this is probably Unix-specific. The output tar file will be named base_dir.tar, possibly plus the appropriate compression extension (.gz, .bz2 or .Z). Return the output filename.

  Warning: This should be replaced with calls to the `tarfile` module.

`make_zipfile`( | base_name, base_dir[, verbose=`0`, dry_run=`0`])

  Create a zip file from all files in and under base_dir. The output zip file will be named base_dir + .zip. Uses either the `zipfile` Python module (if available) or the InfoZIP zip utility (if installed and found on the default search path). If neither tool is available, raises `DistutilsExecError`. Returns the name of the output zip file.