libarchive

libarchive is the C library that reads and writes basically every archive format you've heard of: tar, zip, 7-zip, cpio, ISO images, RAR, and more, with all the common compression codecs underneath. If you've used bsdtar on a Mac or BSD system, you've used libarchive, it ships those command-line tools too. It's plumbing, the kind that quietly powers other software.

There's nothing to run or host. You link it into your C or C++ program, or use the bundled bsdtar and bsdunzip from the command line. One useful trait: it streams, so it can handle archives too big to fit in memory, reading and writing on the fly instead of loading the whole thing.

Developers who need to handle archive files inside their own software are the audience, this saves you from shelling out to a dozen format-specific tools or writing format parsers by hand. For everyday compression at the command line, your OS tools are fine. libarchive earns its place when you're building something that has to deal with archives programmatically.

The catch: it's a building block, not a product, so there's nothing here for a non-developer. It's BSD-licensed and rock solid, the kind of dependency you adopt and forget. The only real risk is the usual one with format parsers, archive handling has a long history of security bugs, so keep it updated.