Unix/Linux : How to archive and compress entire directory ?

While writing tutorial on how to untar a gzipped tar ball archive with Golang today, I was lost at how to actually create a tar ball archive and compress the tar ball. Maybe I'm just getting too old or could't remember the exact command after such a long time.

Therefore I better write a short tutorial on how to use the tar command to archive and compress entire directory(and sub-directories).

The simplest command to create a tar ball :

> tar -zcvf tarball.tar.gz /directorytoarchive

Basically the command above is to :

-z Compress archive with gzip format

-c Create archive

-v Verbose mode ( more information)

-f Archive filename to be created

So the parameters should look like this :

> tar -zcvf <archivenametobecreated.tar.gz> <directory to be archived>

Just in case that you only want to create tar ball WITHOUT gzip.

> tar -cvf <archivenametobecreated.tar.gz> <directory to be archived> // just minus the z flag

Hope this short tutorial is useful for you.