Index: Doc/library/tarfile.rst
===================================================================
--- Doc/library/tarfile.rst	(revision 78514)
+++ Doc/library/tarfile.rst	(working copy)
@@ -234,7 +234,12 @@
 archive several times. Each archive member is represented by a :class:`TarInfo`
 object, see :ref:`tarinfo-objects` for details.
 
+A :class:`TarFile` object can be used as a context manager in a :keyword:`with`
+statement. See the :ref:`tar-examples` section for a use case.
 
+.. versionadded:: 2.7
+
+
 .. class:: TarFile(name=None, mode='r', fileobj=None, format=DEFAULT_FORMAT, tarinfo=TarInfo, dereference=False, ignore_zeros=False, encoding=ENCODING, errors=None, pax_headers=None, debug=0, errorlevel=0)
 
    All following arguments are optional and can be accessed as instance attributes
@@ -650,6 +655,14 @@
        tar.add(name)
    tar.close()
 
+The same example using the :keyword:`with` statement. This guarantees that the
+:class:`TarFile` object will be finally closed even in case of an error::
+
+    import tarfile
+    with tarfile.open("sample.tar", "w") as tar:
+        for name in ["foo", "bar", "quux"]:
+            tar.add(name)
+
 How to read a gzip compressed tar archive and display some member information::
 
    import tarfile
Index: Lib/tarfile.py
===================================================================
--- Lib/tarfile.py	(revision 78514)
+++ Lib/tarfile.py	(working copy)
@@ -2411,6 +2411,13 @@
         """
         if level <= self.debug:
             print >> sys.stderr, msg
+
+    def __enter__(self):
+        self._check()
+        return self
+
+    def __exit__(self, type, value, traceback):
+        self.close()
 # class TarFile
 
 class TarIter:
Index: Lib/test/test_tarfile.py
===================================================================
--- Lib/test/test_tarfile.py	(revision 78514)
+++ Lib/test/test_tarfile.py	(working copy)
@@ -327,7 +327,27 @@
         finally:
             os.remove(empty)
 
+    def test_context_manager(self):
+        with tarfile.open(tarname) as tar:
+            self.assertFalse(tar.closed, "closed inside runtime context")
+        self.assertTrue(tar.closed, "context manager failed")
 
+    def test_context_manager_closed(self):
+        tar = tarfile.open(tarname)
+        tar.close()
+        with self.assertRaises(IOError):
+            with tar:
+                pass
+
+    def test_context_manager_exception(self):
+        with self.assertRaises(Exception) as exc: 
+            with tarfile.open(tarname) as tar:
+                raise IOError
+        self.assertIsInstance(exc.exception, IOError,
+                              "wrong exception raised in context manager") 
+        self.assertTrue(tar.closed, "context manager failed")
+
+
 class StreamReadTest(CommonReadTest):
 
     mode="r|"