Solved xz compression level

[gofer_touch]

The following command

XZ_OPT=-9 tar -cvJf folder.tar.xz folder

Does not directly work on FreeBSD to compress a folder unless one is using a bash shell. Is there an equivalent way to compress a folder of files while also being able to set the compression level without piping output between programs? Parallel compression seems to be tricky to get going as well.

 

[gofer_touch]

Well this seems to work well:

tar -cvf folder.tar folder; xz -9 folder.tar

Also with parallel xz:

tar -cvf folder.tar folder; pixz -9 folder.tar

 

[arp242]

I assume you're using tcsh(1)? You need to prefix it with env(1):
env XZ_OPT=-9 tar -cvJf folder.tar.xz folder

PS.
For gzip(1), the size difference is usually very small, and the compression time is *a lot* longer. It's almost never worth to use more than -6 (the default).

 

[gofer_touch]

I assume you're using tcsh(1)? You need to prefix it with env(1):
env XZ_OPT=-9 tar -cvJf folder.tar.xz folder
...

That is a more elegant option, thanks!