bsdtar 2.8.4-1 (amd64 binary) in ubuntu maverick

 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.