in reply to Problems with Archive::Tar?
From what I can tell by looking at the manual page, there are two interfaces for adding material to an archive: add_files and add_data. My guess is that you are using the add_files function, yes?
The mechanism of not reading the file data into memory is to conserve memory usage. The LWP::UserAgent class had a similar issue a few years back, in that it would attempt to load all the contents of a file being sent via CGI file-upload into memory before starting the transaction. This became a problem with a 32Meg file I was trying to send using HTTP as a transport layer :-).
It does sound like what you have run into is a bug, in that I too would have assumed that files added with add_files would be dealt with in-place if the file already exists. I would consider using add_data, or just being in the habit of following add_files with calls to get_content.
As for the question of support/maintenance, the package has changed hands a few times already. But CPAN itself now makes use of it, so I believe it is safe to assume that it will never be completely orphaned. Updated in a timely fashion? That I cannot offer any guarantees on...
--rjray