paxmirabilis (based on paxtar), is an implementation of an archiving
utility that reads and writes several formats -- traditional ones, the
extended formats specified in IEEE 1003.1, and the ar(5) format used by
deb(5) packages (MirBSD specific paxtar extension). The pax interface
was designed by IEEE 1003.2 as a compromise in the chronic controversy
over which of tar or cpio is best, but this implementation offers
paxcpio and paxtar for easy calling.

This software is developed as part of The MirOS Project, in the form of
one of the portable subprojects, similar to mksh. It is now the default
pax implementation in Debian GNU/Linux.