Registers an archive format.

    name is the name of the format. function is the callable that will be
    used to create archives. If provided, extra_args is a sequence of
    (name, value) tuples that will be passed as arguments to the callable.
    description can be provided to describe the format, and will be returned
    by the get_archive_formats() function.

def register_archive_format(name, function, extra_args=None, description=''):
    """Registers an archive format.

    name is the name of the format. function is the callable that will be
    used to create archives. If provided, extra_args is a sequence of
    (name, value) tuples that will be passed as arguments to the callable.
    description can be provided to describe the format, and will be returned
    by the get_archive_formats() function.
    """
    if extra_args is None:
        extra_args = []
    if not isinstance(function, collections.Callable):
        raise TypeError('The %s object is not callable' % function)
    if not isinstance(extra_args, (tuple, list)):
        raise TypeError('extra_args needs to be a sequence')
    for element in extra_args:
        if not isinstance(element, (tuple, list)) or len(element) !=2:
            raise TypeError('extra_args elements are : (arg_name, value)')

    _ARCHIVE_FORMATS[name] = (function, extra_args, description)