I needed a simple (no external dependencies, no specific php.ini settings) tool that is able to create a verbatim tar archive of a directory, including empty directories, broken symlinks, device files.
This implementation supports the following:
- empty directories
- symbolic links (broken/valid)
- character/block devices
- arbitrary file name lengths (GNU longlink)
It does not support:
- FIFOs
- link targets with a length of 100 or more