Stop Mac OS X creating hidden files when using the tar command

Last week I found something quite frustrating with the tar command on Mac OS X, it likes to put hidden files into archives when you tar them up, it doesn’t give you any warning, just does it.

Creating a tar, and then having a look at its contents, you’ll see something like this :

JamesMac:staging-area JElsey$ tar -tf MyApplication.tar.gz 
src/
src/._MyApplication.cmd
src/MyApplication.cmd
src/._MyApplication.properties
src/MyApplication.properties
src/lib/
src/lib/._anExternalJar.jar
src/lib/anExternalJar.jar

Notice the files prefixed with ._.

You can quite easily stop this, by setting the following environment variable (I prefer to set this up in the bashrc profile):

COPYFILE_DISABLE=1; export COPYFILE_DISABLE

Then, tar up the files again, and you should see those hidden files no longer.

JamesMac:staging-area JElsey$ tar -tf MyApplication.tar.gz 
src/
src/MyApplication.cmd
src/MyApplication.properties
src/lib/
src/lib/_anExternalJar.jar

Failing that, you could also install GNU tar instead of the Mac version.