(Correction: as a child comment says, it was gzipped tar, not plain tar)
Well, not exactly _full_, unless you're talking compressed files. You can be smart and skip ahead to read the next file's metadata by knowing the current file's size. GNU tar and FreeBSD tar already do this; getting a listing of millions of files for a hundreds-of-gigabytes tar is nearly instant this way.
Compressing the archive does throw a wrench into it. You'll have to decompress the whole thing in that case.
Most Linux distros and Windows suffer from the same problem of state. Immutable OSes and systems basically fix this, and it's amazing. I'm happy to use a computer again.
Immutable computing sounds frickin amazing!!! Being able to check your entire system configuration into Git, and effectively re-build your OS setup at any time, is really something I want to explore this year.
Yes, it really is amazing. My computer is amazing. I have been able to build intricate set ups that are immune to upgrades and such. I use a relatively complicated XMonad based set up right now, but because it's all in Nix, upgrades are a breeze. Yes, there is some trouble, but it's flagged before it happens or I can easily revert to the old system. This is the longest time I've gone without re-installing an OS (not that that would even be a big deal with Nix anyway, because a new install will be identical).
- Average karam farming HN user
And back then, there wasn't really a strict API for extensions, so they just injected things into random places, and Microsoft, 28 years later, is still supporting that.
File-roller and Ark definitely do freeze up if you attempt to browse a large compressed tarball. Maybe greying out and showing the indefinite status bar is a better experience for you...but they're equally non-responsive.