tar(1) from FreeBSD, using libarchive The bsdtar program has a number of advantages over previous tar implementations: * Library. Since the core functionality is in a library, it can be used by other tools, such as pkg_add. * Automatic format detection. Libarchive automatically detects the compression (none/gzip/bzip2) and format (old tar, ustar, gnutar, pax, cpio, iso9660, zip) when reading archives. It does this for any data source. * Pax Interchange Format Support. This is a POSIX/SUSv3 extension to the old "ustar" tar format that adds arbitrary extended attributes to each entry. Does everything that GNU tar format does, only better. * Handles file flags, ACLs, arbitrary pathnames, etc. Pax interchange format supports key/value attributes using an easily-extensible technique. Arbitrary pathnames, group names, user names, file sizes are part of the POSIX standard; libarchive extends this with support for file flags, ACLs, and arbitrary device numbers. * GNU tar support. Libarchive reads most GNU tar archives. If there is demand, this can be improved further.