MarsSeed [1] filed a deletion request for tar-libarchive [2]: This is not exactly a dummy package as its description say, but nevertheless it is harmful and should be deleted. It creates a symlink with the name 'tar', targeting libarchive's 'bsdtar'. But the problem is, bsdtar is not tar, and the former has less options, therefore at best it can provide only a subset of tar's features. Dependents that explicitly rely on tar's unique options will fail during runtime. [core]/[tar] is a dependency of the package [core]/[base], therefore it is mandatory for even the slimmest, most skeletal installations of Arch Linux. It should not be replaced with a mismatching, API and ABI incompatible tool. [1] https://aur.archlinux.org/account/MarsSeed/ [2] https://aur.archlinux.org/pkgbase/tar-libarchive/