Takes a huge tarball in input and writes gzipped files in current directory

tgz-to-gztree.py

#! /usr/bin/env python

import sys, os
import tarfile, gzip

if not len(sys.argv) > 0:
    print 'usage: %s huge.tgz' % (sys.argv[0])
    sys.exit(1)

tar = tarfile.open(sys.argv[1])
for m in tar:
   if not m.isfile():
      continue
   try:
       os.makedirs(os.path.dirname(m.name))
   except:
       pass
   # Tarball is assumed to be "safe"
   # no check is done to assure there is no ../../ member in tar
   mgz = gzip.GzipFile(m.name + '.gz', 'w')
   fd = tar.extractfile(m)
   for line in fd:
       mgz.write(line)
   mgz.close()
tar.close()