Cannot decompress .tar.xz file, getting "xz: Cannot exec: No such file or directory" from tar

Question

Per How do I uncompress a tarball that uses .xz?, I tried tar xf php-5.6.0RC4.tar.xz and tar -xJf php-5.6.0RC4.tar.xz and in both cases I get the following:

tar (child): xz: Cannot exec: No such file or directory
tar (child): Error is not recoverable: exiting now
tar: Child returned status 2
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now

It's this php-5.6.0RC4.tar.xz.

I'm running Ubuntu 14.04 LTS.

What's wrong?

Answer 1

The line

tar (child): xz: Cannot exec: No such file or directory

gives you the real error. The xz programm cannot be executed, probably because it is not installed. To install the xz (de)compression tools, issue

sudo apt-get install xz-utils