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albook · 04:59 PM

Hi guys.
I have been able to compile p7zip (7-zip ported to UNIX) on Mac OS X.
p7zip is a command line file archiver, with excellent compression rates. Far better than gzip and bzip2.

As an example, it compress Firefox 1.0 to 6.2MB instead of 9.1MB with gzip!

Download here.
Enjoy!

timmerk · Nov 13, 2004, 09:16 PM

Can any program that can uncompress zip files uncompress these zip files?

Krusty · 10:12 PM

I just downloaded it (thanks) and got it to work. It is a command line only utility and Stuffit Expander 8.x would not open the resulting compressed file *.7z. It appears that this will only be good for sharing with others (or for one's own archiving) where you know the person has a .7z decompression utility and knowledge of how to use the command line.

I can verify these results using various compression tools on a 128k .doc file (sorry, I know that's not the hugest file to compress)
OS X archiving: 44k zip
DropZip 8.x: 44k zip
DropStuff: 40k sit
DropStuff: 36k sitx
7za: 36k .7z file

So, looks like it is better than regular old zip but only equal to sitx. Not totally sure that the command line stuff and lack of compatibility will be worth the space savings, though. Still ... neat thing, thanks for getting it working in OS X !! If I ever come across a .7z file I'll know what it is and how to open it now

[edit]
Update: Hmmmmm ... I just tried again with a 2.4mb folder of jpgs. Both zip and sitx made a 2.2mb archive while 7za crunched those puppies down to 1.7mb. Impressive.

yukon · Nov 13, 2004, 10:49 PM

7zip is the highest compression available now, and it's open source. It now beats the previous king RAR 3.0 on all counts, for it's multiplatform open standard, and better compression. Thanks for compiling and posting it

Thanks for the note, the 7zip project's main focus of late was to make it OS and arch independent, not sure if the p7zip linux port was done by a different author though. I started using 7zip a while back for CD archiving single files too large to normally fit on a CD, but could only decompress on windows.

edit: I've elaborated on this a number of times, with the formats in order of compression ability, listing pros and cons, you can search my username with "compression".

headbirth · Nov 14, 2004, 02:40 PM

does this retain OSX resource forks?

albook · Nov 14, 2004, 03:07 PM

Thanks a lot for the feedback guys.

@timmerk. No, to unpack .7z files you need a application with 7-zip support.
On Mac OS X and GNU/Linux p7zip is the only choice, but on Windows there are several choices (7-Zip, PowerArchiver, WinRAR and probably more).

@Krusty. Yeah the compression performance is really stunning. Especially for text files (program sources etc...).
Too bad its not well known yet, so it pretty useless when sending files to other people. But great for your own archiving!

@yukon. p7zip is ported by someone else than Igor Pavlov (7-zip author). He calls him self myspace.
But looking at the p7zip forum it seems like they both share knowledge to create a more portable software.

@headbirth. No, afaik it does not retain resource forks.
So if thats important you need to place the files in an Tar container first.

A p7zip GUI, with drag&drop compression and decompression, would be great.
Too bad I suck at cocoa programming!

Catfish_Man · 03:46 PM

Originally posted by albook:
Thanks a lot for the feedback guys.

A p7zip GUI, with drag&drop compression and decompression, would be great.
Too bad I suck at cocoa programming!

If you'd like to send me a binary and a man page or equivalent, I'd be willing to have a shot at a simple Cocoa front end (D&D compression/decompression wouldn't be hard).

david[at]bluesky[dot]com

headbirth · Nov 14, 2004, 03:27 PM

Your file didn't contain a manpage ... is there one around?

albook · Nov 14, 2004, 03:45 PM

@Catfish_Man. Great, that would make it a lot easier to use!

I hope I have collected the neccesary man files.
Download here. If you need more, download the sources and look through the different DOC files.
You find a binary in my first post.

Its basicly like this.
Compress > best: 7za a -t7z -mx=9 archive_name.7z filenames/folder
Compress > fast: 7za a archive_name.7z filenames/folder
Decompress: 7za x archive_name.7z
Test Archve: 7za t archive_name.7z

Lot more switches available, but this is the basic ones.

yukon · Nov 14, 2004, 03:55 PM

it does not retain resource forks.
So if thats important you need to place the files in an Tar container first

just for the people who don't know this stuff (i'm sure albook does), tar also doesn't support resource forks, you'll need hfstar. it's on sourceforge (everything seems to be these days :), you can also binhex it or use macbinary, i only know of binjuggler on VT.

albook · Nov 14, 2004, 04:04 PM

Originally posted by yukon:
just for the people who don't know this stuff (i'm sure albook does), tar also doesn't support resource forks, you'll need hfstar.

Actually I did not know, but I learn new stuff every day!
I mostly use Disk Images myself, but this 7-zip compression looked so promizing that I had to give it a go.

Thanks for the information!

sushiism · Nov 14, 2004, 05:19 PM

7zip is the most pointless form of compression going.

yukon · Nov 14, 2004, 10:30 PM

sushiism, it is the best form of compression "going". it's compressed 750mb compressed movies (video files for god sake) so they fit with extra space on a 700mb CD-R. It made it so that I wouldn't have to use WinRAR, which I found painful. I'm stuck at the maximum space my G4 can handle (buying an SATA controller when they have NCQ support). Archiving to CD, if a video or file I like is too big for burning then it's deleted.

Not quite sure what you meant by "form of compression", it's algorithmic like all the others I know of. If you mean "format", it beats the best compression programs out there now for filesize, it's open source, it was fast enough for me (it's archival purposes, fine as long as it doesn't take days). There are different levels of compression, if gzip is right for you, use it, it's fast and it does (what's now) basic compression. There's bzip2 for high compression, and now there's 7zip for when you really need to bring down the hammer.

albook · Nov 14, 2004, 11:37 PM

Originally posted by sushiism:
7zip is the most pointless form of compression going.

If you dont like it, dont use it.
But let the rest of us decide what we will use!

headbirth · Nov 15, 2004, 09:27 AM

Seems to really slow down the system and open apps when used on large files. Anyone else notice this?

could apple use 7za as a compression algorithm for disk images?

nooon · Nov 15, 2004, 10:27 AM

A Drop7zip.app would be nice..

headbirth · Nov 15, 2004, 11:12 AM

Use OnMyCommand CM and their you go...droplets or Contextual menu. Your choice.

Or write an Applescript droplet.

albook · Nov 19, 2004, 05:02 PM

Version updated to 4.12!

Dont know how many of you who use it, but I inform you anyway...

headbirth · Nov 19, 2004, 05:15 PM

Have you built the new version for X yet?

Thain Esh Kelch · Nov 19, 2004, 06:04 PM

Ill wait for a fully functional GUI version..

albook · Nov 19, 2004, 06:32 PM

Originally posted by headbirth:
Have you built the new version for X yet?

Do you mean its source for a graphical version out, ready to be compiled?
If you can point me to it I'll give it a go...

p7zip is a port of 7za.exe for Unix.
7za.exe is the command line version of 7-zip

headbirth · Nov 19, 2004, 08:05 PM

Nevermind I found it on your website.

Thanks!

DeathMan · Nov 20, 2004, 01:49 AM

for anyone who got this far in the thread, and don't already know this (probably not a lot of you), resource forks *generally* aren't completely necessary. However, when you unpack a tarball of your home directory, and find that all your fonts are now useless, you'll wish you did a hfstar, or a dmg file. Apparently some (or maybe all, I don't know) fonts store the actual font data in the resource fork. I know, I should own all my fonts, but I "inherited" a bunch from my dad, and was sad to lose them all. Ah well.

headbirth · Nov 20, 2004, 12:48 PM

If your looking for a GUI. I just noticed the app Compress supports p7 compression.

yukon · Nov 21, 2004, 08:29 PM

A whole lot of files from OS 9 and below had resource forks. In fact, most did. Killing the resource fork on a program, a disk image, a .sea file, sounds, fonts, etc, would simply break them. In OS X, almost nothing has resource forks other than some carbon programs ISTR. In geneneral, you need to keep a watch on it, just to make sure you don't do anything that breaks resource forks, just in case. HFSTar ensures there's no problems, might as well use it.