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### 8.3 Making `tar` Archives More Portable

Creating a `tar` archive on a particular system that is meant to be useful later on many other machines and with other versions of `tar` is more challenging than you might think. `tar` archive formats have been evolving since the first versions of Unix. Many such formats are around, and are not always compatible with each other. This section discusses a few problems, and gives some advice about making `tar` archives more portable.

One golden rule is simplicity. For example, limit your `tar` archives to contain only regular files and directories, avoiding other kind of special files. Do not attempt to save sparse files or contiguous files as such. Let’s discuss a few more problems, in turn.