diff --git a/misc/tools.func b/misc/tools.func
index bfe6cba96..c96699770 100644
--- a/misc/tools.func
+++ b/misc/tools.func
@@ -9334,6 +9334,11 @@ fetch_and_deploy_from_url() {
 
   if [[ "$file_desc" =~ gzip.*compressed|gzip\ compressed\ data ]]; then
     archive_type="tar"
+  elif [[ "$file_desc" =~ XZ\ compressed\ data ]]; then
+    # tar -xf auto-detects the compression codec from content, so a bare
+    # .tar.xz (which `file` reports as just "XZ compressed data" without
+    # mentioning tar) is extracted the same way as any other tar archive.
+    archive_type="tar"
   elif [[ "$file_desc" =~ Zip.*archive|ZIP\ archive ]]; then
     archive_type="zip"
   elif [[ "$file_desc" =~ Debian.*package|Debian\ binary\ package ]]; then