Keep the size of the tarfile to a minimum by excluding files that can be recreated from files contained in the tarfile. Examples are:
- .o (object) files that can be recreated by compiling the program source code.
- .dvi files produced by processing TeX and LaTeX source files.
- .ps (postscript) files generated by drawing and publishing packages.
You can then reduce the size of tarfile by using the compress command. For example:
compress project.tar
This will create a file called project.tar.Z. You can unpack a compressed tarfile without uncompressing it.