Lzip
Lzip is a lossless data compressor with a user interface similar to the one of gzip or bzip2. Lzip decompresses almost as fast as gzip and compresses more than bzip2, which makes it well suited for software distribution and data archiving. Lzip is a clean implementation of the LZMA algorithm. The Lzip file format is designed for long-term data archiving. It is clean, provides very safe four factor integrity checking, and is backed by the recovery capabilities of lziprecover.
| Tags | Archiving Compression |
|---|---|
| Licenses | GPLv3+ |
| Operating Systems | POSIX |
| Implementation | C++ |
Recent releases
- 19 May 2014 09:55
Release Notes: The compression ratio of option "-9" has been slightly increased. The compression time of option "-0" has been reduced by 2%. "lzip -0" is now comparable in compression speed and ratio to "gzip -6".
- 03 Feb 2014 12:56
Release Notes: 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".
- 03 Oct 2013 11:13
Release Notes: This release 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.
- 14 Aug 2013 10:30
Release Notes: 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.
- 17 Jul 2013 11:50
Release Notes: Lzip now shows the progress of compression at verbosity level 2 (-vv).
Recent comments
Re: Other LZMA tools
I think you are right that the standalone 'lzma' program (replacing the older lzmash) has a very basic data format. But still, it works, and is the more established tool. I would be happy for lzip to replace it if lzip is better, but to do that it should include support for decompressing legacy .lzma files.
(I note that the gzip format has provision for alternative compression methods but nobody ever seems to use it.)
> As for lrzip, it is actually
> an extension of rzip---and the two are
> more of a proof-of-concept than a
> realworld-workable format.
The file format may be basic but the tool is very good. It usually compresses better than plain LZMA (the algorithm, used in both lzma-utils and lzip) and faster too. LZMA is better for all-purpose use but for batch compression tasks where you don't mind relatively high memory usage, lrzip can give a big improvement. For some Subversion dump files I back up overnight it gave a fourfold increase in compression for about the same speed.
Other LZMA tools
An alternative command-line compressor using LZMA is lzmash from lzma-utils. Also interesting is lrzip which adds a preprocessing step before the LZMA compression to give a better speed/tightness tradeoff, at the expense of using more memory.
ant_diaz
13 Sep 2003 01:07
