title	homepage	tagline
Crabz	https://github.com/sstadick/crabz	crabz: multi-threaded gzip (like pigz, but in Rust)

To update or switch versions, run webi crabz@stable (or @0.8, @beta, etc).

Cheat Sheet

crabz brings the power of multi-core compression to gzip and deflate.
(and a few other formats + other useful features)

gzip, faster.

crabz -I ./example.json
crabz -d -I ./example.json.gz

Compressing (gzip) with 8 threads at compression level 6.
Decompressing (gzip) with 8 threads available.

Table of Contents

• Files
• Tar
• Other Formats

Files

These are the files/directories that are created and/or modified with this install:

~/.config/envman/PATH.env
~/.local/bin/crabz

How to Optimize

Flag	Value	Comments
-l, --compression-level	1-9	higher is slower
-p, --compression-threads	8	set to the number of available cores
		(but no more than 4 for decompression)
-P, --pin-at	0	pin to physical cores, starting at N
		(so 4 threads starting at 0 is 0, 1, 2, 3)

crabz -l 9 -p 8 -I ./example.tar

crabz -d -p 4 -I ./example.tar.gz

How to use with Tar

Tar and then compress:

tar cv ./example/ | crabz -o ./example.tar.gz

Or decompress and then untar:

crabz -d ./example.tar.gz | tar xv

How to use with other formats

crabz supports most of the LZ77 with Huffman coding compression formats:

Format	Extension	Notes
gzip	.gz	of GNU fame
bgzf	.gz	supports random-access decompression
mgzip	.gz	of python fame
zlib	.zz	of PNG fame, also .z
snap	.sz	of LevelDB and MongoDB fame
deflate	.gz	the O.G. LZ77

crabz --format mgzip -I ./example.tar

# DO NOT decompress in-place
crabz --format mgzip -d ./example.tar.gz -o ./example.tar

# verify before removing the original
tar tf ./example.tar

⚠️ Warnings:

• DO NOT deflate in-place with non-standard formats:
  Although gunzip will work correctly on files compressed with mgzip or bgzf, some combinations (ex: decompressing from mgzip with bgzf) could result in corruption!
• tar xvf and gzip -l may report incorrect information, even though gunzip will work

See also:

• https://dev.to/biellls/compression-clearing-the-confusion-on-zip-gzip-zlib-and-deflate-15g1

(p.s. zip isn't in the list because it's a container format like tar, not a zip format)