Jeremy C. Reed wrote:

>I wrote my reply below last week and forgot to send it....
>  
>

Heh... I've done that before.  :)

>As for pax, there is now a PR:  bin/29459: pax fails on
>quagga-0.98.2.tar.gz
>  
>

Yes, I saw the PR appear shortly after I posted the original message, 
and the subsequent fix.

>For your workaround (to use gtar instead), you could set the
>
>EXTRACT_CMD.tar.gz
>
>(See examples in mk/bsd.pkg.mk.)
>  
>

I'll keep all that in mind for next time something like this comes up.  
Meanwhile, the quagga folks have fixed their distribution tarball, and 
I've submitted pkg/29518 with an update to the quagga pkg. (Greg Troxel 
actually did the bulk of the work)

Thanks for the response,
+j