Comment by vorakl

This is an interesting one. What was the version of tar? Was it gnu tar? I wonder, how did you create that archive?

I'm asking this because I was trying to reproduce the same situation and everything seems to be working fine:

  $ tar -C /tmp/root3 -cvf test.tar .
  ./
  ./.config/
  ./.config/test
  ./.local/
  ./var/
  ./var/db/
  ./var/db/xbps/

or even like this

  $ tar -cvf test2.tar root3/
  root3/
  root3/.config/
  root3/.config/test
  root3/.local/
  root3/var/
  root3/var/db/
  root3/var/db/xbps/

No special options were needed. But, if I do it this way, then, there are definitely missing all dot directories:

  $ tar -cvf test2.tar root3/*
  root3/usr/
  root3/usr/bin/
  root3/usr/bin/xbps-uunshare

But this problem is not a tar's problem. That's only because "*" mask doesn't match dot files:

  $ echo root3/*
  root3/usr root3/var

For that purpose, you need to clearly add a dot:

  $ echo root3/.*
  root3/.config root3/.local

Thus, the solution might be

  $ tar -cvf test2.tar root3/.* root3/*
  root3/.config/
  root3/.config/test
  root3/.local/
  root3/usr/
  root3/usr/bin/

But, I'd rather stick to "-C dir/" option instead of relying on "*" mask in this case.