Install lzip with Homebrew, apk, apt, dnf, MacPorts, Nix, pacman, scoop, zypper

Project links

• Homepage
• Repository
• Upstream docs
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• lzip

Project history

Antonio Diaz Diaz's lzip project started in 2008, with the Savannah old-release index showing lzip 0.1 in August 2008 and lzip 1.0 in October 2008. The project framed itself not just as another LZMA compressor but as a safer Unix archive format with a small, fully documented container, CRC-protected data, explicit member sizes, and a reference decompressor explained in the manual.

The project grew into a family rather than a single binary. lzlib provides a library interface, clzip and pdlzip provide alternate implementations, plzip handles parallel compression, lunzip and lzd focus on decompression and education, tarlz combines tar archiving with lzip members, and lziprecover handles damaged .lz files.

Adoption history

Lzip did not replace gzip or xz as the universal default, but it earned durable packaging across Unix-like distributions because it offers a clear format story and strong recovery semantics. The input package facts show it available in Homebrew, Debian/Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch, Alpine, MacPorts, Nix, Scoop, and openSUSE-style ecosystems.

Its adoption is strongest among users who care about long-term source distribution, recoverable compressed tar archives, and a conservative command-line interface. Package maintainers also encounter it because some upstream source releases are distributed as .tar.lz files.

How it is used

The lzip CLI mirrors familiar gzip/bzip2 workflows: compress files to .lz, decompress with -d, test integrity with -t, list metadata with -l, write to stdout with -c, and tune compression with -0 through -9 or explicit dictionary and match-length options.

For archive pipelines, lzip is commonly paired with tar as .tar.lz. The manual highlights multimember output, concatenated stream handling, volume splitting, and cooperation with lziprecover for damaged files.

Why package nerds care

Lzip is significant because it is a format argument disguised as a small CLI: the package is about reproducible, recoverable, documented compression rather than chasing the absolute best ratio. That makes it beloved in the slice of the packaging world that cares about future decodability and damaged-media recovery.

For maintainers, the lzip family raises practical questions about bootstrapping .tar.lz source archives, installing info/manual documentation, and deciding when to package the sibling tools separately.

Timeline

• 2008: lzip 0.1 appears in the Savannah old-release index.
• 2008: lzip 1.0 is released.
• 2010s: lzip family tools such as lzlib, plzip, lunzip, pdlzip, clzip, and lziprecover appear in Savannah release areas.
• 2026: lzip 1.26 is documented by the official manual and release index.

Related projects

• lziprecover repairs and extracts data from damaged lzip files.
• plzip is the parallel compressor for large files.
• tarlz builds tar archives that preserve alignment between tar members and lzip members.
• lzlib exposes the lzip format through a library API.

Sources

• https://download-mirror.savannah.gnu.org/releases/lzip/
• https://download-mirror.savannah.gnu.org/releases/lzip/old/
• https://www.nongnu.org/lzip/
• https://www.nongnu.org/lzip/manual/lzip_manual.html
• source_facts.package-manager