What about bzip2?

[DervishD]

    Hello all :))

    Why has been removed the support for bzip2? Before tar 1.13 (or
using some prepackaged tar's) I could use -I for uncompressing .bz2
archives, just as I used -z for .gz. In modern distros, I've seen
that the same is accomplished by using -j, but in my hand compiled
tar (directly downloaded from the GNU site), this cannot be used. I
must use the --use-compress-program option (quite big and ugly).

    Is there intention of adding a new flag or something like that in
future tar releases?

    Thanks a lot for the 'tar' program :) and for reading this ;)

    Raúl