pixz ☆

« Back to VersTracker

Description:
Parallel, indexed, xz compressor

Type: Formula | Tracked Since: Dec 28, 2025

Links: Homepage | formulae.brew.sh

Category: System utilities

Tags: compression xz parallel indexing archiving

Install: brew install pixz

About:
Pixz creates a parallelized implementation of the xz compressor, significantly speeding up compression on multi-core systems. It generates a POSIX-compatible tar archive that is fully indexed, allowing for extremely fast random access extraction of individual files without decompressing the entire archive.

Key Features:

Parallel compression using multiple CPU cores
Creates indexed archives for instant random-access extraction
Fully compatible with standard xz and tar utilities
Significant performance gains on large archives

Use Cases:

Compressing large software source code tarballs for distribution
Creating indexed backups for rapid file restoration
Speeding up build artifact archiving in CI/CD pipelines

Alternatives:

xz – Standard xz is single-threaded but offers identical compression ratios; pixz is a drop-in replacement for faster compression.
zstd – Zstandard offers faster compression/decompression speeds and parallelism natively, but pixz specifically targets the xz format ecosystem.

Version History

Detected	Version	Rev	Change	Commit
Sep 13, 2025 11:04am		0	VERSION_BUMP	a98dfd48
Sep 13, 2024 5:52am		0	VERSION_BUMP	797f74d9