Tools for working with xtrabackup files? I have database backups in xtrabackup format. I would like to load them into hive without restoring to a mysql instance and use sqoop to then do the transfer.

If there are libraries to work with the format I can probably write my own utility to load the data into hive. I'm also more than happy to receive other suggestions on how to do that.
There are tools to extract data from XtraBackup data files. But don't forget about a redo log. Without it the Xtrabackup copy is incomplete. To make the backup usable you have to apply the redo log which means you need to restore the backup.

I would look at mydumper or mysqldump with -T option and then upload the dumps to hive.