In a new post, Greg Beaver talks about a few things, the main one being a new release of the phar extension he's made - phar version 2.0.0a1 - a reworking of the previous functionality with loads of new features including:

• Phar now supports tar and zip archives with the same API that is supports phar archives.
• Phar has a front controller for web applications that fully handles MIME types, supports mod_rewrite-like functionality with far more flexibility
• Phar supports phar:// stream wrappers in include_path for PHP 5.2+
• Phar supports creation and modification of data-only tar and zip archives (no executable phar stub) via the PharData class.

There've also been updates to the manual for the project to reflect this new version of its API. You can download this latest version here: source or Windows DLL.