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So I need to compress a directory with max compression.

How can I do it with xz? I mean I will need tar too because I can't compress a directory with only xz. Is there a oneliner to produce e.g. foo.tar.xz?

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3 Answers

up vote 6 down vote accepted

Assuming xz honors the standard set of commandline flags - including compression level flags, you could try:

tar -cf - foo/ | xz -9 -c - > foo.tar.xz
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and this uses maximum compression level with XZ? – LanceBaynes Jan 12 '12 at 21:34
adding -9 to xz will make it max – bdowning Jan 12 '12 at 21:45
up vote 13 down vote 
XZ_OPT=-9 tar cJf tarfile.tar.xz directory

tar's lowercase j switch uses bzip, uppercase J switch uses xz.

The XZ_OPT environment variable lets you set xz options that cannot be passed via calling applications such as tar.

This is now maximal

See man xz for other options you can set.

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and this uses maximum compression level with XZ? – LanceBaynes Jan 12 '12 at 21:34
It does now, see edited answer and XZ_OPT env var ;) – bdowning Jan 13 '12 at 0:08
Just a note: you have to export XZ_OPT. – Evan Teitelman Apr 22 at 22:45
No, you don't. That's the whole point. You can set the environment var for just that invocation. You can export it if you want to, but you don't have to. – bdowning Apr 23 at 9:36
You're assuming bash-like shell for that. – anddam Apr 29 at 19:56
up vote 2 down vote

tar is actually not the best idea for medium-sized files (~10-50 MB): tar preserves creation time, modification time, permission, the directory structure, etc. which takes space.

If this preservation is what you want, then XZ_OPT=-9e tar cJf tarfile.tar.xz directory is precisely what you need.

If you don't care about FS metadata preservation, then give 7zip a try:

7za a -mx=9 directory.7z directory/

(defaults to LZMA2 compression algorithm just like xz... but you could also try PPMd if you have a lot of ASCII/UTF8 text)

Just to give you an idea of the difference:

  • raw data (ASCII text): 18 MB
  • tar: 30 MB (no kidding!)
  • tar.xz: 3.2 MB
  • tar.7z: 3.3 MB
  • 7z: 2.8 MB

I don't know exactly why 7zip can't reach xz level on the tar file, but the difference between tared file and untared file is not that negligible.

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