Re: [Bug-ddrescue] .lz file on ddrescue

[Antonio Diaz Diaz]

Hello.

Jimmmac wrote:
> Whose idea was it to compress ddrescue with an .lz compression?

Lzip is used because it compresses better than gzip and bzip2, and 
because the lzip format is more suitable for long-term archiving. (The 
tarballs I distribute contain the source, which should ideally be kept 
archived somewhere forever).

99% of users can install ddrescue via their distro package manager, and 
those compiling ddrescue from source should not have any problem 
installing or compiling one of the several lzip (de)compressors.

Once you have lzip installed, GNU tar 1.23 or later will unpack ddrescue 
with the command:
        tar -xf ddrescue[version].tar.lz
or with older tar:
        lzip -cd ddrescue[version].tar.lz | tar -xf -


If you really need a gzipped tarball of the latest stable release, you 
can find it, for example, here:
http://fossies.org/linux/privat/ddrescue-1.17.tar.gz/

But development releases are not for final users, and are only available 
in lzip format.


Best regards,
Antonio.