[Dev] [dev] [From Arch] Now using Zstandard instead of xz for package compression

Parabola GNU/Linux-libre: Recent news updates: Isaac David dev at lists.parabola.nu
Thu Jan 16 04:34:51 GMT 2020


As announced on the [Arch-dev mailing list](https://lists.archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-dev-public/2019-December/029752.html), on Friday, Dec 27 2019, the package compression scheme has changed from xz (.pkg.tar.xz) to [zstd (.pkg.tar.zst)](https://lists.archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-dev-public/2019-December/029778.html).

zstd and xz trade blows in their compression ratio. Recompressing all packages to zstd with their options yields a total ~0.8% increase in package size on all of their packages combined, but the decompression time for all packages saw a ~1300% speedup.

We already have hundreds of zstd-compressed packages in our repositories, and as packages get updated more will keep rolling in. No user-facing issues have been found as of yet, so things appear to be working.

As an end-user no manual intervention is required, assuming that you have read and followed the news post [from late last year](https://www.parabola.nu/news/from-arch-required-update-to-recent-libarchive/).

URL: /news/from-arch-now-using-zstandard-instead-of-xz-for-package-compression/


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