: 2.  The exclude mechanism seems to break some of GNU tar's option
   : 	processing.
   
   This will probably be changed to use pax.  (This used to work before some of
   the extract option handling changed.)


indeed, i made pax-as-tar work correctly with the exclude option because
it failed to extract in pkgsrc/cross for me when i wanted it to :-)  it
certainly used to work.