F21 System Wide Change: lbzip2 as default bzip2 implementation

[Mikolaj Izdebski]

On 04/02/2014 08:10 PM, Tom Hughes wrote:
> On 02/04/14 18:24, Jaroslav Reznik wrote:
> 
>> == Detailed Description ==
>> lbzip2 is an independent implementation of bzip2 compression tool. It
>> provides
>> interface strictly compatible with bzip2, but also adds several new
>> features
>> and improvements, such as:
>>
>> * multi-threaded operation for both compression and decompression,
>> with almost
>> linear scalability,
> 
> Does that mean that it creates multiple streams in the compressed file?
> 
> If it does then be aware that some bzip2 decoders (notable the Java one)
> will not be able to decompress the result.

lbzip2 creates only *one* stream per compressed file, even when using
multiple threads.  Such files can be decompressed with all versions of
bzip2, libbz2 and other tools, such as Apache Commons Compress.

This is a difference between lbzip2 and pbzip2, which creates multiple
streams.  Files created with pbzip2 cannot be decompressed by some
software, such as libbzip2 (all versions), bzip2 older than version
0.9.0, Apache Commons Compress.

-- 
Mikolaj Izdebski
Software Engineer, Red Hat
IRC: mizdebsk