[Lzip-bug] Plzip 1.9 released

[Antonio Diaz Diaz]

I am pleased to announce the release of plzip 1.9.

Plzip is a massively parallel (multi-threaded) implementation of lzip, fully 
compatible with lzip 1.4 or newer. Plzip uses the compression library lzlib.

Lzip is a lossless data compressor with a user interface similar to the one 
of gzip or bzip2. Lzip can compress about as fast as gzip (lzip -0) or 
compress most files more than bzip2 (lzip -9). Decompression speed is 
intermediate between gzip and bzip2. Lzip is better than gzip and bzip2 from 
a data recovery perspective. Lzip has been designed, written and tested with 
great care to replace gzip and bzip2 as the standard general-purpose 
compressed format for unix-like systems.

Plzip can compress/decompress large files on multiprocessor machines much 
faster than lzip, at the cost of a slightly reduced compression ratio (0.4 
to 2 percent larger compressed files). Note that the number of usable 
threads is limited by file size; on files larger than a few GB plzip can use 
hundreds of processors, but on files of only a few MB plzip is no faster 
than lzip.

The homepage is at http://www.nongnu.org/lzip/plzip.html

The sources can be downloaded from 
http://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases/lzip/plzip/

The sha256sums are:
47b379751b190ec57e5c3dd923626be9b5429593b0fc70b78d09c19574e090f2 
plzip-1.9.tar.lz
14d8d1db8dde76bdd9060b59d50b2943417eb4c0fbd2b84736546b78fab5f1a7 
plzip-1.9.tar.gz

This release is also GPG signed. You can download the signature by appending 
'.sig' to the URL. If the 'gpg --verify' command fails because you don't 
have the required public key, then run this command to import it:

  gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv-keys 8FE99503132D7742

Key fingerprint = 1D41 C14B 272A 2219 A739  FA4F 8FE9 9503 132D 7742


Changes in version 1.9:

  * Plzip now reports an error if a file name is empty (plzip -t "").

  * Option '-o, --output' now behaves like '-c, --stdout', but sending the 
output unconditionally to a file instead of to standard output. See the new 
description of '-o' in the manual. This change is backwards compatible only 
when (de)compressing from standard input alone. Therefore commands like:
  plzip -o foo.lz - bar < foo
must now be split into:
  plzip -o foo.lz - < foo
  plzip bar
or rewritten as:
  plzip - bar < foo > foo.lz

  * When using '-c' or '-o', plzip now checks whether the output is a 
terminal only once.

  * Plzip now does not even open the output file if the input file is a 
terminal.

  * The new option '--check-lib', which compares the version of lzlib used 
to compile plzip with the version actually being used at run time, has been 
added.

  * The words 'decompressed' and 'compressed' have been replaced with the 
shorter 'out' and 'in' in the verbose output when decompressing or testing.

  * When checking the integrity of multiple files, plzip is now able to 
continue checking the rest of the files (instead of exiting) if some of them 
fail the test, allowing 'plzip --test' to show a final diagnostic with the 
number of files that failed (just as 'lzip --test').

  * Testing is now slightly (1.6%) faster when using lzlib 1.12.

  * When compressing, or when decompressing or testing from a non-seekable 
file or from standard input, plzip now starts only the number of worker 
threads required.

  * When decompressing or testing from a non-seekable file or from standard 
input, trailing data are now not counted in the compressed size shown.

  * When decompressing or testing a multimember file, plzip now shows the 
largest dictionary size of all members in the file instead of showing the 
dictionary size of the first member.

  * Option '--list' now reports corruption or truncation of the last header 
in a multimenber file specifically instead of showing the generic message 
"Last member in input file is truncated or corrupt."

  * The error messages for 'Data error' and 'Unexpected EOF' have been 
shortened.

  * The commands needed to extract files from a tar.lz archive have been 
documented in the manual, in the output of '--help', and in the man page.

  * Tarlz is mentioned in the manual as an alternative to tar + plzip.

  * Several fixes and improvements have been made to the manual.

  * 8 new test files have been added to the testsuite.


Please send bug reports and suggestions to lzip-bug@nongnu.org


Regards,
Antonio Diaz, plzip co-author and maintainer.
Self-determination is a human right. Free Catalan political prisoners.
--
If you care about data safety and long-term archiving, please consider using 
lzip. See http://www.nongnu.org/lzip/lzip_benchmark.html
http://www.nongnu.org/lzip/manual/lzip_manual.html#Quality-assurance and
http://www.nongnu.org/lzip/safety_of_the_lzip_format.html Thanks.