pixz ☆
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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
May 2, 2023 10:28pm 0 VERSION_BUMP c39d311c
May 2, 2023 8:58pm 0 VERSION_BUMP 5cb708f8
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