All commands tested on Mac OS Monterey / Sep 12, 2023
How to append a directory to an existing tar archive
Add a directory ~/some-other-directory to an existing files.tar archive.
You can use this short tar command.
tar -rvf files.tar ~/some-other-directory-somewhere
Or this more verbose tar command.
tar --append --verbose --file files.tar ~/some-other-directory-somewhere
You can append multiple directories onto an exsiting tar archive by simply chaining the directories.
tar --append --verbose --file files.tar ~/some-other-directory-somewhere ~/another-directory-somewhere
Options explained
-ror--appendtells tar to append to an existing archivevor--verbosetells tar to produce verbose outputfor--filetells tar that the next parameter will be the tar file to create, extract, append to, list, etc.
