Lzip

Lzip is an open source and free command-line program, a lossless data compressor based on the LZMA (Lempel–Ziv–Markov chain) compression algorithm, which features a command-line interface similar to the one of bzip2 utility, as well as very safe integrity checking.

Compresses data much better than the bzip2 utility

It is capable of decompressing almost as fast as the gzip utility, as well as to compresses data much better than the bzip2 tool, making it well suited for software distribution. The software can preserve the original permissions, modification date, and, when possible, ownership of the compressed files.

Lzip is designed from the ground up to replace every file specified in the command-line with a compressed version of the respective file, renaming it to "original_name.lz," where ‘original_name’ is the name of the program.

Command-line options

Default command-line options include support for setting the member size limit, support for decompressing data, support for overwriting existing output files, the ability to force recompression of compressed files, and support for setting the dictionary size limit.

Additionally, the user will be able to add a command-line option if he or she wants to keep the input files after compression, to store the output into a specified file, to set the volume size limit, to test the integrity of the compressed file, as well as to set the compression level.

Getting started with Lzip

To install and use the Lzip program under a Linux kernel-based operating system, you must first download the latest version of the software from its official website or via Softoware, where it is distributed as a source tarball in the LZ file format.

Save the archive somewhere on your computer, preferably your Home directory, extract the archive’s contents using an archive manager utility that supports the LZ format, open a terminal emulator app and navigate to the location of the extracted archive files (e.g. cd /home/softoware/lzip-1.16).

Then, run the ‘./configure && make’ command to configure (and eventually optimize) and compile the program for your operating system and hardware architecture (64-bit and 32-bit platforms are supported at the moment).

Install the Lzip program system wide by running the ‘make install’ command as root or the ‘sudo make install’ command as a user with root privileges. View the usage message and command-line options (check the section above for details) with the ‘lzip --help’ command.

What is new in this release:

• Compression ratio of option '-9' has been slightly increased.
• Compression time has been reduced by 4%.
• Compression time of option '-0' has been reduced by 2%.
• main.cc (close_and_set_permissions): Behave like 'cp -p'.
• Minor improvements.
• lzip.texinfo: Renamed to lzip.texi.
• License changed to GPL version 2 or later.

What is new in version 1.16 Pre1:

• Copying of file dates, permissions, and ownership now behaves like "cp -p". (If the user ID or the group ID can't be duplicated, the file permission bits S_ISUID and S_ISGID are cleared).
• Compression time has been reduced by 4%.
• Some minor improvements have been made.
• "lzip.texinfo" has been renamed "lzip.texi".

What is new in version 1.15:

• This version shows the progress of compression at verbosity level 2 (-vv). Decompressing and testing no longer show file version.
• The option "-n, --threads" is now accepted and ignored for compatibility with plzip.
• The configure script now accepts options with a separate argument.
• The chapter "Stream format" and the appendix "Reference source code" have been added to the manual.

What is new in version 1.15 RC1:

• Decompressing and testing no longer shows the file version.
• The "Reference source code" appendix of the manual has been updated to version 0.4 of lzd.
• Minor fixes have been made.

What is new in version 1.14:

• The compression ratio has been slightly increased.
• Compression time has been reduced by 5%.
• Decompression time has been reduced by 12%.

What is new in version 1.14 RC3:

• Compression ratio has been slightly increased.
• Compression time has been reduced by 5%.

What is new in version 1.13 RC2:

• The compression time of the option "-0" has been reduced by 2%.
• A reorganization of the compression code has been made.
• A small change has been made in the "--help" output and the man page.
• Quote characters in messages have been changed as advised by GNU Coding Standards.

What is new in version 1.13 RC1:

• Lziprecover has been moved to its own package.
• The inability to change output file attributes has been downgraded from error to warning.

What is new in version 1.12 RC2:

• For large values of "--match-length", (high compression levels), the compression ratio has been slightly increased, and compression time has been reduced by up to 6%.

Requirements:

• Arg_parser