FAZip 0.3 (December 11, 2013)

[Bulat Ziganshin]

Download: http://freearc.org/download/research/fazip03.zip

Russian text: http://forum.ru-board.com/topic.cgi?forum=5&topic=35164&start=2460#18

FAZip 0.3 is a single-file compression utility (like gzip/bzip2), that supports all the FreeArc compression algorithms, including CLS dlls, 4x4, and method chaining (like rep:512m+delta+4x4:lzma). It lacks feature-rich command line and data checksums, though, so i can't yet recommend to use it as general-purpose compressor.

FAZip may be useful for benchmarking and bug-hunting FreeArc compression algorithms, and as external compressor replacing built-in FreeArc methods. The provided arc-fazip.ini demonstrates how to use FAZip to completely replace built-in LZMA and REP algorithms while retaining full data format compatiblity (i.e data compressed by FAZip may be extracted by built-in methods and vice versa).

FAZip replaces FreeArc-LZMA-x64.exe, Delta.exe and other standalone compression tools compiled from the FreeArc library.

What's new:

- Windows: 32-bit executable and facompress*.dll compiled by ICL 2011

- Windows: 64-bit executable compiled by MSVC 2013

- Linux: 32/64-bit dynamic/static-linked executables produced by GCC 4.6.3 on Ubuntu 12.04 (no CLS support)

- raw compressed stream produced by "compress:method" and extracted by "decompress:method" syntax (employed by arc-fazip.ini)

- automatically employs all cpu cores, while keeping the computer responsive

- Win7 taskbar progress indicator (the green bar)

- default: use Large Memory Pages (2MB/4MB) if possible; -slp-: never use LP; -slp+: use only LP, abort if there aren't enough LP available (just for benchmarking)

- -i0 option disables program output (although error/^Break messages are still displayed)

- updates progress indicator only once per 0.2 seconds (otherwise it may need too much time)

- prints "\n" before exiting and shows error descriptions instead of numeric codes

- removes unfinished outfile on Ctrl-Break or error

LZMA:

- dictionary up to 2 gb in BT4, up to 4000 mb in HT4/HC4

- improved compression with 1 GB dictionary

- prefetching in BT4/HT4 matchfinders - up to 20% faster

- default MaxChain (:mc) for HT4 now is FastBytes/2 (:fb/2)

Other compressors:

- FAZip supports all FreeArc algorithms, including "tempfile" and cls-*.dll, except only of external compressors defined in arc*.ini

- 64-bit versions of ppmd/grzip/tta don't really work yet

- REP: made up to 2x faster with large :l/:c (since now it uses all CPU cores for hashing)

- Delta: made 1.7x faster

Plans for future FAZip versions, in order of priority:

- 32/64-bit executables compiled by MSVC 2010/2012/2013, ICL 2011/2013/2014 and GCC 4.8

- document usage and parameters for all compression algorithms

- compressed file format with fileid and checksum

- 64-bit versions of ppmd/grzip/tta

- much faster HT4/BT4 matchfinders (so that LZMA speed will be limited only by the Optimal Parser)

- steal cmdline processing from bzip2 or tornado

- 64-bit MemSize (lzma:h4g)

- no error messages on -i0?