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xz

brew install xz v5.8.3 0BSD AND GPL-2.0-or-later

High-compression data archiver and decompressor in C, achieving better ratios than gzip at the cost of slower speed.

Why you might care

Use xz when compression ratio matters more than speed—typical in distribution of large source tarballs, kernel images, or long-term storage. It's a standard POSIX tool available on most Linux systems, and many package managers (including Homebrew) rely on it internally. The xz format supports parallel compression and extensive configuration of the LZMA2 algorithm.

Categories

compression archiver

Alternatives

gzip bzip2 zstd 7zip
286.6k
30-day installs · #6
1.2M
90-day · #3
3.6M
365-day · #4

Links

Blurb generated by claude-haiku-4-5 on today.

Raw metadata 
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  "aliases": [],
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  "categories": [
    "compression",
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  "caveats": null,
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  "deprecated": 0,
  "deprecation_reason": null,
  "desc": "General-purpose data compression with high compression ratio",
  "disable_reason": null,
  "disabled": 0,
  "enrichment_fetched_at": "2026-06-20T23:40:36+00:00",
  "first_seen": "2026-06-20T23:34:18+00:00",
  "full_name": "xz",
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  "homepage": "https://tukaani.org/xz/",
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  "homepage_title": "XZ Utils",
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  "last_seen": "2026-06-20T23:34:18+00:00",
  "license": "0BSD AND GPL-2.0-or-later",
  "llm_generated_at": "2026-06-20T23:42:04+00:00",
  "llm_model": "claude-haiku-4-5",
  "name": "xz",
  "oldnames": [],
  "one_liner": "High-compression data archiver and decompressor in C, achieving better ratios than gzip at the cost of slower speed.",
  "optional_dependencies": [],
  "rank_30d": 6,
  "rank_365d": 4,
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  "raw_hash": "9df58fafcd9c7402",
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  "ruby_source_path": "Formula/x/xz.rb",
  "tap": "homebrew/core",
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  "version_head": null,
  "version_stable": "5.8.3",
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  "why_use_this": "Use xz when compression ratio matters more than speed\u2014typical in distribution of large source tarballs, kernel images, or long-term storage. It\u0027s a standard POSIX tool available on most Linux systems, and many package managers (including Homebrew) rely on it internally. The xz format supports parallel compression and extensive configuration of the LZMA2 algorithm."
}