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Home / How to Open a Pkg File in Windows 10

How to Open a Pkg File in Windows 10

Open/Extract xar/pkg File with Freeware on Windows/Mac/Linux

xar (short for eXtensible ARchive) is an open source file archiver and the archiver¡¯s file format. It was created within the OpenDarwin project and is used in Mac OS X 10.5 for software installation routines, as well as browser extensions in Safari 5.0. Xar replaced the use of gzipped pax files.

pkg is just .xar archives with a different extension and a specified file hierarchy. pkg is an OS X Installer file. This file format is used by Apple Inc. on its Macintosh line of computers and on the iPhone. It is also used by Sony PlayStation 3 on downloadable content over PlayStation Network. The contents of a PKG file can be installed using the Apple Installer application.

The XAR project aims to provide an easily extensible archive format. Important design decisions include an easily extensible XML table of contents for random access to archived files, storing the toc at the beginning of the archive to allow for efficient handling of streamed archives, the ability to handle files of arbitrarily large sizes, the ability to choose independent encodings for individual files in the archive, the ability to store checksums for individual files in both compressed and uncompressed form, and the ability to query the table of content's rich meta-data.

The XAR file format has three main regions, The Header, The Table of Contents, and The Heap. The header is a small binary data structure that identifies the file format (file magic). The table of contents is parsed as an XML document. The heap occupies the remainder of the file. Files' data are stored in the heap.

Files in xar are individually compressed. This allows for quick extraction of individual files without the extra disk space requirements and CPU usage of extracting the entire archive, as compared to a compressed tar archive. This makes xar useful for quick restores of accidentally deleted or overwritten files, from a backup archive. Additionally, this means xar can use different compression methods for each file in the archive. For instance, it might not be a good idea to try to try to compress an already compressed file, but a large file might benefit greatly from using bzip2, whereas a small text file would be better served to use gzip.

Open/Extract xar/pkg File on Windows

Easy 7-Zip opens/extracts xar/pkg file easily on Windows. The Easy 7-Zip was developed based on 7-Zip. 7-Zip is a famous open source file archiver. The Easy 7-Zip is an easy-to-use version of 7-Zip. The open source freeware keeps all features of 7-Zip and adds a few useful features that makes the software more user-friendly.

Easy 7-Zip works on Windows 10/8.1/8/7/Vista/2008/2003/XP/2000 (both 32-bit and 64-bit compatible).

  1. Free Download Easy 7-Zip
  2. Install Easy 7-Zip by step-by-step instructions
  3. The installation will associate xar/pkg with Easy 7-Zip automatically
  4. Double-click on xar/pkg file to open xar/pkg file with Easy 7-Zip

    5. Easy 7-Zip
    You will see files or folders within the xar/pkg file then, click button Extract to extract the xar/pkg file.
  5. Alternatively, Right-click on xar/pkg file on Windows Explorer


    6. And then, choose Extract files..., Extract Here, or Extract to "folder\" to extract the xar/pkg file.
  6. Done

Easy 7-Zip Download Links:

  • Free Download Easy 7-Zip (x86 and x64 editions in one package)
  • Free Download Easy 7-Zip (x86 edition only)
  • Free Download Easy 7-Zip (x64 edition only)

Open/Extract xar/pkg File on Mac

You can open pkg file directly on Mac. If you want to extract xar/pkg you need to install extra software. B1 Free Archiver opens/extracts xar/pkg file on Mac. B1 Free Archiver is a free software for creating archive folder and extracting archive file. B1 Archiver works on all platforms - Windows, Linux, Mac and Android. The freeware supports most popular formats including xar/pkg.

B1 Free Archiver is compatible with:

  • Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks
  • Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion
  • Mac OS X 10.7 Lion
  • Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard

  • Free Download B1 Free Archiver for Mac

Open/Extract xar/pkg File on Linux

You need to install xar on Linux.

# wget https://xar.googlecode.com/files/xar-1.5.2.tar.gz
# tar zxvf xar-1.5.2.tar.gz
# cd xar-1.5.2
# ./configure
# make
# make install

If an error "configure: error: Cannot configure without xml2-config" occurs when running configure, please install libxml2-dev. On Debian, type:

# apt-get install libxml2-dev

List folders and files in xar/pkg:

$ xar -tf archive.xar
$ xar -tf archive.pkg

Open/Extract xar/pkg file with xar on Linux:

$ xar -xvf archive.xar
$ xar -xvf archive.pkg

xar command options:

  • -t: Lists an archive
  • -x: Extracts an archive
  • -v: Print filenames as they are archived
  • -f: Specifies an archive to operate on

Alternatively, you can use p7zip to extract xar/pkg file. p7zip is the Unix command-line port of 7-Zip.

Install p7zip-full on CentOS and Fedora

Install p7zip-full on Debian and Ubuntu

$ sudo apt-get install p7zip-full

List directories and files in xar/pkg file

$ 7z l archive.xar
$ 7z l archive.pkg

Extract xar/pkg file with p7zip on Linux

$ 7z x archive.xar
$ 7z x archive.pkg

Copyright © 2013-2017 James Hoo All rights reserved.

How to Open a Pkg File in Windows 10

Source: http://www.e7z.org/open-xar.htm