xref: /freebsd/contrib/xz/TODO (revision e9ac41698b2f322d55ccf9da50a3596edb2c1800)
1
2XZ Utils To-Do List
3===================
4
5Known bugs
6----------
7
8    The test suite is too incomplete.
9
10    If the memory usage limit is less than about 13 MiB, xz is unable to
11    automatically scale down the compression settings enough even though
12    it would be  possible by switching from BT2/BT3/BT4 match finder to
13    HC3/HC4.
14
15    XZ Utils compress some files significantly worse than LZMA Utils.
16    This is due to faster compression presets used by XZ Utils, and
17    can often be worked around by using "xz --extreme". With some files
18    --extreme isn't enough though: it's most likely with files that
19    compress extremely well, so going from compression ratio of 0.003
20    to 0.004 means big relative increase in the compressed file size.
21
22    xz doesn't quote unprintable characters when it displays file names
23    given on the command line.
24
25    tuklib_exit() doesn't block signals => EINTR is possible.
26
27    If liblzma has created threads and fork() gets called, liblzma
28    code will break in the child process unless it calls exec() and
29    doesn't touch liblzma.
30
31
32Missing features
33----------------
34
35    Add support for storing metadata in .xz files. A preliminary
36    idea is to create a new Stream type for metadata. When both
37    metadata and data are wanted in the same .xz file, two or more
38    Streams would be concatenated.
39
40    The state stored in lzma_stream should be cloneable, which would
41    be mostly useful when using a preset dictionary in LZMA2, but
42    it may have other uses too. Compare to deflateCopy() in zlib.
43
44    Support LZMA_FINISH in raw decoder to indicate end of LZMA1 and
45    other streams that don't have an end of payload marker.
46
47    Adjust dictionary size when the input file size is known.
48    Maybe do this only if an option is given.
49
50    xz doesn't support copying extended attributes, access control
51    lists etc. from source to target file.
52
53    Multithreaded compression:
54      - Reduce memory usage of the current method.
55      - Implement threaded match finders.
56      - Implement pigz-style threading in LZMA2.
57
58    Buffer-to-buffer coding could use less RAM (especially when
59    decompressing LZMA1 or LZMA2).
60
61    I/O library is not implemented (similar to gzopen() in zlib).
62    It will be a separate library that supports uncompressed, .gz,
63    .bz2, .lzma, and .xz files.
64
65    Support changing lzma_options_lzma.mode with lzma_filters_update().
66
67    Support LZMA_FULL_FLUSH for lzma_stream_decoder() to stop at
68    Block and Stream boundaries.
69
70    lzma_strerror() to convert lzma_ret to human readable form?
71    This is tricky, because the same error codes are used with
72    slightly different meanings, and this cannot be fixed anymore.
73
74    Make it possible to adjust LZMA2 options in the middle of a Block
75    so that the encoding speed vs. compression ratio can be optimized
76    when the compressed data is streamed over network.
77
78    Improved BCJ filters. The current filters are small but they aren't
79    so great when compressing binary packages that contain various file
80    types. Specifically, they make things worse if there are static
81    libraries or Linux kernel modules. The filtering could also be
82    more effective (without getting overly complex), for example,
83    streamable variant BCJ2 from 7-Zip could be implemented.
84
85    Filter that autodetects specific data types in the input stream
86    and applies appropriate filters for the corrects parts of the input.
87    Perhaps combine this with the BCJ filter improvement point above.
88
89    Long-range LZ77 method as a separate filter or as a new LZMA2
90    match finder.
91
92
93Documentation
94-------------
95
96    More tutorial programs are needed for liblzma.
97
98    Document the LZMA1 and LZMA2 algorithms.
99
100
101Miscellaneous
102------------
103
104    Try to get the media type for .xz registered at IANA.
105
106