# electron/asar

Simple extensive tar-like archive format with indexing

Repository: https://github.com/electron/asar
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/asar
Language: TypeScript
License: MIT
License Family: permissive
Topics: asar, pickle, javascript, electron, chrome
Last push: 2026-08-18T05:38:58+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 98/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-02T17:46:02.011165+00:00)
- activity 98, release rhythm 98, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 4363, "days_push": 15, "days_rel": 15, "gap_med": 19, "n_releases_24m": 20}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 2854, forks 264 (observed 2026-08-28T04:07:25.822521+00:00)

## What it is
@electron/asar is a TypeScript library and CLI for the ASAR archive format, a tar-like format that concatenates files without compression while supporting random access via a JSON index. It is used primarily to package Electron applications, with deduplication of identical file contents and support for unpacking selected files to disk.

## Use cases
- package an electron app into an asar archive
- extract files from an asar archive
- list the contents of an asar file
- create archives with random access without compression
- reduce archive size by deduplicating identical files
- exclude certain directories when packing an app
- programmatically create asar archives from node

## When to choose
- you are packaging or distributing an Electron application
- you need a simple uncompressed archive format with fast random access and an easy-to-parse JSON header
- you want a CLI plus programmatic API for packing and extracting archives

## When to avoid
- you need compression, since asar stores files uncompressed like tar
- you need a general-purpose archive format interoperable with standard tools like tar or zip
- you need robust built-in error handling in the programmatic API

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: active
- function: compression, file-system, cli, developer-tools
- domain: developer-tools, files, cross-platform
- platform: cli, cross-platform
- tags: asar, archive-format, electron-packaging, tar-like, random-access, file-deduplication, nodejs

## Member repositories
- electron/asar (main) score 98

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:07:25.822521+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T07:36:45.533340+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/electron/asar (fetched 2026-08-28T04:07:25.822521+00:00, sha 5832182f8df6)
  - registry_npm: https://registry.npmjs.org/asar (fetched 2026-08-29T09:52:34.630075+00:00, sha 56c8e5fe3a72)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.