Compiling BSD tar on Linux

While researching Arch Linux ARM for the ODroid HTPC project, I came across an issue with unpacking the image.

It turns out that Arch Linux ARM requires bsdtar version 3.3 or above, and only versions 3.2.x are available in the Debian and Ubuntu repositories.

To resolve this, simply run the following:

sudo apt-get install build-essential
wget https://www.libarchive.org/downloads/libarchive-3.3.3.tar.gz
tar -xzf libarchive-3.3.3.tar.gz
cd libarchive-3.3.3/
./configure
make
sudo make install
bsdtar --version

Now you’ll have the latest (at time of writing) version of bsdtar all working, all ready to proceed with the rest of the already convoluted installation guide.