How to use it?

Here's an example of how to use this modded tar to extract the U-Boot archive on Windows.

Why extract U-Boot on Windows?

The U-Boot archive contains several symbolic links that will cause tar to fail to extract. It's an iconic example of extracting a symbolic-link-contained archive on an unsupported platform.

How to do it?

1. Acquire the source archive

In Git Bash:

wget https://ftp.denx.de/pub/u-boot/u-boot-2025.07.tar.bz2

2. Extract the archive using this modded tar

In Git Bash:

$ ./tar.exe --copy-links -x -j -v -f u-boot-2025.07.tar.bz2

You'll get the Resolved links output at the end:

...
u-boot-2025.07/tools/zynqmpbif.c
u-boot-2025.07/tools/zynqmpimage.c
u-boot-2025.07/tools/zynqmpimage.h
Resolved 43 links