Proper MIME media type for TAR files

Question

When working with TAR files, I've run across the MIME type

application/x-tar

However I am not sure it is right, because

MIME types in the x- namespace are considered experimental

and it seems odd to me for venerable TAR.

Are there any recent RFC about MIME and TAR ? And what's about widespread HTTP server and browsers support ?

There are commonly used standardized MIME types that still use x-. For example, application/x-www-form-urlencoded. There have been many MIME types for TAR: application/tar, application/x-tar, applicaton/x-gtar, multipart/x-tar, application/x-compress, application/x-compressed. — Remy Lebeau
Mime types for .tar.gz include application/gzip, application/x-gzip, application/x-gtar, and application/x-tgz. — Remy Lebeau
Remy, I am talking about uncompressed archives. For compressed ones, it isn't so simple, see serverfault.com/questions/304361/… — Massimo
6 may 2020 : IANA still doesn't speak about TAR : iana.org/assignments/media-types/media-types.xhtml — Massimo

Chandrani H Chandrani H · Accepted Answer · 2019-09-16T09:41:41

The MIME type for an uncompressed TAR file as mentioned in Wikipedia is application/x-tar.