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+History of LZMA Utils and XZ Utils |
+================================== |
+ |
+Tukaani distribution |
+ |
+ In 2005, there was a small group working on Tukaani distribution, which |
+ was a Slackware fork. One of the project goals was to fit the distro on |
+ a single 700 MiB ISO-9660 image. Using LZMA instead of gzip helped a |
+ lot. Roughly speaking, one could fit data that took 1000 MiB in gzipped |
+ form into 700 MiB with LZMA. Naturally compression ratio varied across |
+ packages, but this was what we got on average. |
+ |
+ Slackware packages have traditionally had .tgz as the filename suffix, |
+ which is an abbreviation of .tar.gz. A logical naming for LZMA |
+ compressed packages was .tlz, being an abbreviation of .tar.lzma. |
+ |
+ At the end of the year 2007, there was no distribution under the |
+ Tukaani project anymore, but development of LZMA Utils was kept going. |
+ Still, there were .tlz packages around, because at least Vector Linux |
+ (a Slackware based distribution) used LZMA for its packages. |
+ |
+ First versions of the modified pkgtools used the LZMA_Alone tool from |
+ Igor Pavlov's LZMA SDK as is. It was fine, because users wouldn't need |
+ to interact with LZMA_Alone directly. But people soon wanted to use |
+ LZMA for other files too, and the interface of LZMA_Alone wasn't |
+ comfortable for those used to gzip and bzip2. |
+ |
+ |
+First steps of LZMA Utils |
+ |
+ The first version of LZMA Utils (4.22.0) included a shell script called |
+ lzmash. It was wrapper that had gzip-like command line interface. It |
+ used the LZMA_Alone tool from LZMA SDK to do all the real work. zgrep, |
+ zdiff, and related scripts from gzip were adapted work with LZMA and |
+ were part of the first LZMA Utils release too. |
+ |
+ LZMA Utils 4.22.0 included also lzmadec, which was a small (less than |
+ 10 KiB) decoder-only command line tool. It was written on top of the |
+ decoder-only C code found from the LZMA SDK. lzmadec was convenient in |
+ situations where LZMA_Alone (a few hundred KiB) would be too big. |
+ |
+ lzmash and lzmadec were written by Lasse Collin. |
+ |
+ |
+Second generation |
+ |
+ The lzmash script was an ugly and not very secure hack. The last |
+ version of LZMA Utils to use lzmash was 4.27.1. |
+ |
+ LZMA Utils 4.32.0beta1 introduced a new lzma command line tool written |
+ by Ville Koskinen. It was written in C++, and used the encoder and |
+ decoder from C++ LZMA SDK with little modifications. This tool replaced |
+ both the lzmash script and the LZMA_Alone command line tool in LZMA |
+ Utils. |
+ |
+ Introducing this new tool caused some temporary incompatibilities, |
+ because LZMA_Alone executable was simply named lzma like the new |
+ command line tool, but they had completely different command line |
+ interface. The file format was still the same. |
+ |
+ Lasse wrote liblzmadec, which was a small decoder-only library based |
+ on the C code found from LZMA SDK. liblzmadec had API similar to zlib, |
+ although there were some significant differences, which made it |
+ non-trivial to use it in some applications designed for zlib and |
+ libbzip2. |
+ |
+ The lzmadec command line tool was converted to use liblzmadec. |
+ |
+ Alexandre Sauvé helped converting build system to use GNU Autotools. |
+ This made is easier to test for certain less portable features needed |
+ by the new command line tool. |
+ |
+ Since the new command line tool never got completely finished (for |
+ example, it didn't support LZMA_OPT environment variable), the intent |
+ was to not call 4.32.x stable. Similarly, liblzmadec wasn't polished, |
+ but appeared to work well enough, so some people started using it too. |
+ |
+ Because the development of the third generation of LZMA Utils was |
+ delayed considerably (3-4 years), the 4.32.x branch had to be kept |
+ maintained. It got some bug fixes now and then, and finally it was |
+ decided to call it stable, although most of the missing features were |
+ never added. |
+ |
+ |
+File format problems |
+ |
+ The file format used by LZMA_Alone was primitive. It was designed for |
+ embedded systems in mind, and thus provided only minimal set of |
+ features. The two biggest problems for non-embedded use were lack of |
+ magic bytes and integrity check. |
+ |
+ Igor and Lasse started developing a new file format with some help |
+ from Ville Koskinen. Also Mark Adler, Mikko Pouru, H. Peter Anvin, |
+ and Lars Wirzenius helped with some minor things at some point of the |
+ development. Designing the new format took quite a long time (actually, |
+ too long time would be more appropriate expression). It was mostly |
+ because Lasse was quite slow at getting things done due to personal |
+ reasons. |
+ |
+ Originally the new format was supposed to use the same .lzma suffix |
+ that was already used by the old file format. Switching to the new |
+ format wouldn't have caused much trouble when the old format wasn't |
+ used by many people. But since the development of the new format took |
+ so long time, the old format got quite popular, and it was decided |
+ that the new file format must use a different suffix. |
+ |
+ It was decided to use .xz as the suffix of the new file format. The |
+ first stable .xz file format specification was finally released in |
+ December 2008. In addition to fixing the most obvious problems of |
+ the old .lzma format, the .xz format added some new features like |
+ support for multiple filters (compression algorithms), filter chaining |
+ (like piping on the command line), and limited random-access reading. |
+ |
+ Currently the primary compression algorithm used in .xz is LZMA2. |
+ It is an extension on top of the original LZMA to fix some practical |
+ problems: LZMA2 adds support for flushing the encoder, uncompressed |
+ chunks, eases stateful decoder implementations, and improves support |
+ for multithreading. Since LZMA2 is better than the original LZMA, the |
+ original LZMA is not supported in .xz. |
+ |
+ |
+Transition to XZ Utils |
+ |
+ The early versions of XZ Utils were called LZMA Utils. The first |
+ releases were 4.42.0alphas. They dropped the rest of the C++ LZMA SDK. |
+ The code was still directly based on LZMA SDK but ported to C and |
+ converted from callback API to stateful API. Later, Igor Pavlov made |
+ C version of the LZMA encoder too; these ports from C++ to C were |
+ independent in LZMA SDK and LZMA Utils. |
+ |
+ The core of the new LZMA Utils was liblzma, a compression library with |
+ zlib-like API. liblzma supported both the old and new file format. The |
+ gzip-like lzma command line tool was rewritten to use liblzma. |
+ |
+ The new LZMA Utils code base was renamed to XZ Utils when the name |
+ of the new file format had been decided. The liblzma compression |
+ library retained its name though, because changing it would have |
+ caused unnecessary breakage in applications already using the early |
+ liblzma snapshots. |
+ |
+ The xz command line tool can emulate the gzip-like lzma tool by |
+ creating appropriate symlinks (e.g. lzma -> xz). Thus, practically |
+ all scripts using the lzma tool from LZMA Utils will work as is with |
+ XZ Utils (and will keep using the old .lzma format). Still, the .lzma |
+ format is more or less deprecated. XZ Utils will keep supporting it, |
+ but new applications should use the .xz format, and migrating old |
+ applications to .xz is often a good idea too. |
+ |
Property changes on: xz/doc/history.txt |
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Added: svn:eol-style |
+ LF |