UPDATE – The 10.9 Mavericks binary is now available here.
If you try installing or updating MacPorts ports after upgrading OS X to 10.9, you’ll hit an error with gnutar:
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| mbp:tar-1.27 chriskief$ sudo port upgrade outdated | |
| —> Extracting apr | |
| Error: org.macports.extract for port apr returned: command execution failed | |
| Please see the log file for port apr for details: | |
| /opt/local/var/macports/logs/_opt_local_var_macports_sources_rsync.macports.org_release_tarballs_ports_devel_apr/apr/main.log | |
| Error: Unable to upgrade port: 1 | |
| To report a bug, follow the instructions in the guide: | |
| http://guide.macports.org/#project.tickets |
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| :debug:extract Assembled command: 'cd "/opt/local/var/macports/build/_opt_local_var_macports_sources_rsync.macports.org_release_tarballs_ports_devel_apr/apr/work" && /usr/bin/bzip2 -dc '/opt/local/var/macports/distfiles/apr/apr-1.4.8.tar.bz2' | /usr/bin/gnutar –no-same-owner -xf -' | |
| :debug:extract Executing command line: cd "/opt/local/var/macports/build/_opt_local_var_macports_sources_rsync.macports.org_release_tarballs_ports_devel_apr/apr/work" && /usr/bin/bzip2 -dc '/opt/local/var/macports/distfiles/apr/apr-1.4.8.tar.bz2' | /usr/bin/gnutar –no-same-owner -xf – | |
| :info:extract sh: /usr/bin/gnutar: No such file or directory |
The recommended fix from MacPorts is to reinstall MacPorts and all ports after a major OS upgrade. Unfortunately there is no binary for Mavericks yet and quite a few ports are failing to build right now including MySQL 5.6 and Python 2.7.
The  workaround is to keep your current MacPorts installation and install gnutar from source:
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| wget http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/tar/tar-1.27.tar.gz | |
| tar xzvf tar-1.27.tar.gz | |
| cd tar-1.27 | |
| ./configure | |
| make | |
| sudo mv ./src/tar /usr/bin/gnutar |
This is definitely not a long term solution and should really just be used for new ports that are must haves. I wouldn’t run port upgrade outdated or try to upgrade any specific ports as you will find that not all ports will build.
Once a Maverick’s binary is out, be sure to remove this gnutar before doing the migration.
Read more discussion of MacPorts on Mavericks.
Note: Be sure to build and install gnutar from source and not just symlink…
Ramblings on startups, NYC, advertising and hacking (mostly Python) 
thanks for this note, clears up a couple of days of struggle