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PeaZip -
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Copyright notePeaZip's website, all
documentation packages and application's text (language files) are
released under GNU FDL
license.
All other packages published in PeaZip project are released under GNU LGPLv3 license. The same licensing model apply also to any third parts contributions: FDL license in case of text/documentation, and LGPLv3 in any other case. Online documentation
Suggested
linksTo know more about file archiving and data compression:
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  Definition: archive layout, job definition and job log PeaZip aims to speed up archiving operation introducing some useful tools.
PeaZip acts as a frontend
for various applications; in Tools > Settings it is possible to set
how those applications are presented to the users (binarie user
interface) chosing between 3 alternative modes:
Hint: is PeaZip faster/slower than... does it compress better than... ? Speaking of PeaZip GUI, it's quite fast for some aspects (i.e. doesn't need to load system's icons for files, the archive browsing can be turned off making almost instantaneous to open an archive) and quite slow for other (being a frontend, each time an archive is queried interprocess communication is involved; expecially if the program / the input path / the output path is on a slow network or unit this may bring to a noticeable slowdown). But most of the time is usually spent on archiving/extracting operations; in this case PeaZip is as fast as the invoked application (7z, which is command line 7-Zip executable, Paq, Pea, UPX etc...), wich performance is mainly bound to the algorithm and the compression level involved, being the underlying executables good and efficient implementations. PeaZip features extremely fast operations, as tar/untar, split/merge files, create archives with "store" compression level, quite fast operations (i.e. Deflate based algorithms, like in gzip compression), slow/quite slow operations (when bzip2, LZMA, PPMd, unrar, unace are involved), up to very slow operations when PAQ at highest compression levels are used. A wide range of performances and compression levels can be attained using PeaZip, the point is in chosing the right balance between the two things. Hint: what is the "portable" version? PeaZip is a natively portable and autocontained program, with all needed configuration and resources in PeaZip's directory and subdirectories. Standalone versions are packages containing the program; once extracted, the program can run from any path (from the network, on a removable media like and USB stick etc) and doesn't require installation. The downside is that no filetypes will be associated to the program and no entry will be created in "SendTo", context or service menus, however you can create shortcuts or scripts or Linux .desktop files with a fixed first parameter (as explained in program's documentation) to access to all internal functions. Hint: where does compressed and extracted files go? It is possible to deeply customize compression and extraction behaviour. The application can be set to always ask the user for the path for extraction and compression, or to use a default path which can be separately defined for compression and extraction, or also to use the path of the archive which is being extracted (or of the first file which is being archived). Moreover from the extraction and compression interfaces it's possible to override this behaviour for the current PeaZip's session, setting a different path (or the need of asking the path each time); from the archive browser it's also possible to access in any moment the "Extract to..." entries in context menu to explicitely choose the extraction directory for all archive or just displayed or selected objects. UPX is the only exception from that mechanism since it always compress the input executable file in place. See also How to open output folder after the job completes? How to add/remove files to existing archives? From archive browser: open the desired archive
with PeaZip and then use "Add file", "Add folder", "Delete selected
object(s)" context menu entries (or buttons), or drag items in the
archive; Ctrl+BackSpace delete selected objects from archive.
From archive layout creation interface:in "Options" tab, Function
drop down menu (if available for the archive's format) select Add or
Update mode and then select the archive to be updated as output
destination, either from in I/O panel or from the output name dialog.
Some archives cannot be updated because of solid mode used or because
the archive type is supported only for extraction.How to change application's settings? From Tools > Settings
in main menu you can deeply customize the applications behaviour; see
program's documentation for more
detailed description of available options, like turning on/off
messages, choosing a default archive format, etc...
Hint: the reset button
allows to restore default settings, except for theming and window size
and position; it does not reset bookmarks and custom editors which have
separare reset.
Setting files can be reached clicking on the link on the bottom left of the Settings panel, which represents the configuration's path. Deleting configuration files forces PeaZip to rebuild configuration based on hardcoded defaults; conversely, you can save backup copies of the configuration files to keep desired settings. File associations and quick links to application's function, in Windows version, can be resetted running the setup again anytime it's needed. How to change application's language? From Tools > Settings > Localizations you can select the application's language. PeaZip will start displaying files in peazipfolder\res\lang\ path. You can download additional localizations from "PeaZip resources" group on SourceForge, and manually copy them in peazipfolder\res\lang\ path. New translations are made available for users as soon as they are provided, and then will be packaged with future releases of the program for ease of use. How to calculate checksum and hash and compare files? PeaZip "Check files" tool in "File tools" submenucan perform multiple, user selected hash and checksum algorithms on multiple files at once. This function supports
many algorithms ranging from fast checksums to cryptographically strong
hashes: Adler32, CRC family (CRC16, CRC24, CRC32, CRC64),
eDonkey/eMule, MD4, MD5, Ripemd160, SHA families (SHA1; SHA224, SHA256,
SHA384, SHA512), and Whirlpool512.
How to open output folder after the job completes?
After the job has finished you can open the output path clicking on the
button "Open output path" in the job's window, or, in PeaZip's main
window, on the "Open output path" icon in output path's bar (below the
toolbar).Calculating file hash or checksum is useful in example to find duplicate files and to check files for corruption when an original checksum or hash value is known. Output can be seen as HEX (either LSB or MSB) or encoded as Base64. "Compare files" tools, instead, performs byte to byte comparison between two files; unlike checksum or hash based comparison byte to byte comparison can spot exactly what are the different bytes and it is not susceptible of collisions under any circumstance, even if this condition is highly improbable and very difficult (or not practically possible) to be triggered if the chosen algorithm is adequately strong for the scenario where it is intended to be used. How to create, open and extract 7Z and ZIP files? ZIP is a popular archiving format, mainstream on Windows systems; ZIP file format specifications are mantained by PKWare which originally developed the format. Newer archive formats like 7Z, RAR and ACE have gained popularity and introduced several improvements (some of them then brought into ZIP format) like better compression ratio, recovery records, strong encryption etc, but ZIP format retained much of its popularity gained in several years of widespread use. ZIP compression is quite fast and it's based on Deflate algorithm (like in GZip format); alternatively Deflate64 or BZip2 based compression is possible, and supported by PeaZip. Recently WinZip (probably the most popular zip file utility on Windows platform) introduced Advanced Encryption (AE), an AES based authenticated encryption scheme; AE-encrypted archives and classic ZipCrypto-encrypted archives are supported by PeaZip. 7Z is a modern, open source archive
format, featuring AES encryption, native volume spanning, practically
unlimited storage capacity and high compression ratio.
Compression algorithms used (LZMA  , PPMd , BZip2) can take benefit of
parallel computing on modern multicore CPUs.The 7z archive format was introduced by 7-Zip on
Windows platform and ported by p7zip
on Unix platforms.PeaZip uses the components from those two programs (which are released under LGPL license as PeaZip) to offer the same GUI frontend to create, browse, test and extract 7z and ZIP archives under Linux and Windows as well. PeaZip for Linux is desktop-neutral so it can be used either under Gnome or KDE desktop environment, or also other desktop managers. System integration mechanisms relies on FreeDesktop standards and requires a compliant environment, such Gnome and KDE, but basic archiving operations are not affected. 7Z is the default archive format for archive creation with PeaZip and, in Windows, it is available as quickly accessible function in "SendTo" menu, "+ Add to .7Z" entry which allows to directly archive in 7Z format multiple selected files and folders. PeaZip can
How to create, open and extract ARC/WRC files? ARC (or WRC) is a new, open source archiving format developed by Bulat Ziganshin (FreeARC project).The format features
strong but speed/memory efficient compression, comparable to or better
than RAR an 7Z formats for most filetypes.
ARC format supports also:
PeaZip offers a GUI frontend to create, browse, test, repair and extract ARC/WRC archives under Windows and Linux (on Gnome, KDE or other desktop environments). To extract one or more ARC/WRC files you can:
It was of mainstream diffusion before the introduction of ZIP; it has no connection with FreeARC's ARC format. PeaZip does not support those ARC/ARK files. How to create, open and extract PAQ and LPAQ files? PAQ and LPAQ are two families of experimental compressors developed by Matt Mahomey and contributors (PAQ and LPAQ project page).PAQ compression has high
computational requirements (memory, CPU time) if compared to mainstream
compressors, but reaches the highest compression ratio presently
possible.
Most of top ranking compression algorithms belongs from PAQ family or
are derived works like ones featured in KGB
Archiver, WinUDA, WinRK and Emilcont.LPAQ is a "lite" version of PAQ, meant to be faster but providing lower compression levels; it is a compression only utility, so LPAQ-compressed files will feature a double extension, i.e. filename.ext.lpaq. In PeaZip if multiple files are sent to be compressed by LPAQ they will be automatically added to a TAR archive before, resulting in the doule extension TAR.LPAQ. Both PAQ and LPAQ, due to the experimental nature of the project, doesn't feature backward compatibility, so archives created with a PAQ/LPAQ version need to be extracted with the same version. PeaZip offers a GUI frontend to create, browse and extract many PAQ (PAQ8F, JD, L and O) and LPAQ (LPAQ1 and LPAQ5) archive types, under Windows and Linux (on Gnome, KDE or other desktop environments). How to create, open and extract QUAD/BALZ files? QUAD and BALZ are very efficient ROLZ-based
compressor developed by Ilia Muraviev (QUAD
and BALZ project pages), featuring
high compression ratio and high extraction speed.QUAD and BALZ are single file compressors, so compressed files will feature a double extension, i.e. filename.ext.quad. In PeaZip, if multiple files are sent to be compressed by QUAD or BALZ they will be automatically added to a TAR archive before, resulting in the doule extension TAR.QUAD or TAR.BALZ respectively. PeaZip offers a GUI frontend to create, browse and extract QUAD and BALZ compressed files, under Windows and Linux (on Gnome, KDE or other desktop environments). How to extract ACE files? ACE is a proprietary archive format introduced on Windows platform by WinACE and ported to Linux
as command line utility (extraction only) by the same Author of WinACE.No free software is available for ACE archive creation, but UNACE for extraction of ACE archives was made available as royalty free (for use and distribution) closed source software. PeaZip features UNACE for Windows and Linux as external plugin in order to keep the base PeaZip package free of closed source software (only software released under OSI approved licenses are included); see release map for download links. UNACE plugin for PeaZip is available either as installable package or as compressed package to be installed by hand (recommended for PeaZip portable), and it's free of charge. How to save compression settings? PeaZip remembers last used compression levels and compression algorithm for each format; custom options (where applicable), like passes, dictionary size etc are remembered only for the current session or until the compression format is changed. All those settings can be reset to default using the reset button on "Options" panel. How to securely delete files and folders with PeaZip? "Secure delete" function in context menu and in "File tools" submenu is intended for secure file and folders deletion (file shredding). Through Pea executable,
it accepts multiple files and/or directories as input and provides
multiple overwriting of file data with random data stream (AES256 CTR)
forcing flush to disk each time, then replacement of content with
randomly sized random data to fake file size, and multiple renaming of
the file with random string.
Please use it carefully since wiped data will reasonably be not recoverable with known means. Anyway please note that secure file deletion doesn’t overcome any known risk of data leakage, since may exist copies of the data as temporary files saved by application that accessed the file, or as not securely deleted older version of the file, or cached by the system: wiping a file cannot affect that data, which can be recovered with software utilities or specific hardware probes. Moreover, flash based storage usually re-allocates sectors for writing transparently for the software, in order to reduce unit’s wear since flash units have a shorter lifespan in terms of writes; this doesn’t allow to efficiently physically overwrite original content, reducing the efficiency of file wiping. In those cases only wiping the whole disk would be effective, but this can be very time consuming and, for flash based disks, it will lead to fast wear and reduced lifespan of devices (disk wipe is currently not implemented PeaZip’s file wipe procedure) How to speed up definition of archiving/backup jobs? PeaZip introduces two concepts to improve the way archiving-related jobs are handled: archive layouts and exporting jobs to command line. Archive's layout composition interface allows to save current files/folders/filters list as layout. Next times, saved layouts can be imported, merged and edited in archive's layout composer interface, saving the time of defining again the selection of objects to be saved. Once the archiving (and extraction) jobs are defined, it is possible to export current job to command line (Save job button in Options tab); in this way it is possible to save job definition for future use, or to inspect the underlying commands for learning purpouse, or for fine-tuning the job bejond the GUI's capabilities. How to to split a file with PeaZip? PeaZip file split and join utility is compatible with most file split applications; optionally PeaZip can save a control file containing checksum or hash of each volume and of the original file, allowing file level and volume level integrity check, wich will be ignored by other file split utilities. Splitting a file you can
select the volume size form a series of pre-set sizes (floppy disk,
typical mail attachment, CD, DVD...) or you can customize it up to byte
level.
Merging back the split
file, Pea will check this control file and give a simple warning if
it's not found, i.e. because the file was split by other file split
application, or cast an error message if not matching.
In this case the volume level granularity of the control algorithm allows the user to know what are the corrupted volumes, this can be useful in example if the user downloads again non-matching volumes only rather than all volumes, significantly reducing the overhead of the operation. PeaZip offers different ways to split/join files:
If you are splitting a
file into multiple removable media, PeaZip will be check if the media
has enough free space for storing the volumes, and will be asked you to
provide a new empty media each time the previous one is full.
How to stop and undo jobs? You can use "Stop" button in the graphic wrapper to stop the underlying job's process; partial outcome of the job will not be automatically deleted and will remain available for inspection, as well the job log. Troubleshooting: why PeaZip may not browse the content of some archives? In some cases PeaZip may not able to browse archive's content:
Hint: if you have to work on different
archives with the same password you will not need to re-enter it since
it will be kept until you change it or close PeaZip. If you open
different instances of PeaZip each will start with no password and can
keep a different password.
PeaZip may be performing
lengthy operations which needs to wait completition; i.e. PeaZip may be
querying the archive for browsing (expecially when flat mode is used on
archives containing many files) or adding / removing files from
archives (needed time depends on the size of the objects and
compression options), or querying the system about files and folders
to be added to archive layout.
Any time a potentially lengthy operation is requested the cursor is changed to horglass and, when possible, an animation is performed to inform the user that the operation is running and is needing some time to be completed. On startup, PeaZip query the mounted units, so it can be slowed down if, i.e., the system features remote units over a slow network, or has defective drives, or slow removable units (like CD/DVD) are being loaded in the same time. Another potential source of slowness, both for PeaZip and underlying backend processes, may be slowed-down disk subsystem, i.e. by high degree of fragmentation, or cuncurrent disk usage by antivirus/antimalware (expecially if inspecting program's or work files), p2p, file indexing programs (like Google Desktop), system updates, paging, etc... [to run dik-bound speed tests, please take in account that on most systems files are cached after first usage, so becomes accessible in less time in following tests] Some algorithms featured by PeaZip (PAQ, ARC and 7Z at highest level of compression...) requires big amounts of memory, so it is recommended to avoid extreme settings which results in the system to page to disk, that is some orders of magnitude slower than RAM. Troubleshooting: why the progress bar has stopped, or reached the max, and the job is still running? The graphic progress bar try to guess the job progress, but if you need a real time report of the job's progress the native console mode is more detailed and accurate. In Tools > Settings you can set PeaZip to display both the GUI and the console window if you want to have both a graphical interface to control the job and a detailed, real time report on ongoing activities in the console window. UTF-8 support was added
with 2.2 release. It helps to correctly handling filenames with
extended characters and allows localization of the user inteface text.
Does PeaZip supports drag and drop?
If you are willing to contribute your translation see this note for translators. Drag and drop is
supported. You can drag and drop objects from the system to the
application's icon and in the application's forms (main, archive layout
creation, archive browser).
Can I change file associations after installation?From 2.1 version, in Windows, PeaZip can drag and drop objects from the program's forms to the system, through a custom drag&drop function. It will not show standard Windows drag and drop icons and can drop items to (file)Explorer windows or desktop. The advantage of this custom function is that it doesn't need to copy files to system's temporary path on drag&drop operations, speeding up a lot the operation if big files are involved (expecially noticeable if files are not in the same volume of system's temp directory) and don't risking to lowen the security of the operation if the system's temp folder has security policies different from the ones of the intended output destination. PeaZip is yet not integrated with Windows drag and drop's context menu handler (but it is integrated with rightclick's context menu). Presently, file association in Windows are handled only from the installer: you can run it each time you want to customize the association for each supported type. Unistalling PeaZip before running again the setup of the same version is not needed, however it's a good idea (but not mandatory) to unistall previous versions of PeaZip before running the setup of a newer version. How can I use PeaZip form Explorer?
How do I install PeaZip? PeaZip is a standalone, almost
self contained application: you can unpack a peazip_portable package
(.tar.gz) in any path and just click on peazip binary; see
FreeDesktop_integration folder in program's path to know how to
integrate PeaZip with the desktop environment (Gnome, KDE...).
However, installable packages for generic Linux or specific distributions are available as well; on Downloads page you can find most up to date package right for your system (RPM, DEB, TGZ); installable packages automatically integrate PeaZip with the desktop environment. Distribution-specific packages of PeaZip were also built from Linux communities, and are linked on Downloads page too. To install PeaZip on 64 bit Linux systems you can launch 32 bit installers omitting architecture check (i.e using dpkg -i --force-architecture for the DEB package), or use peazip_portable packages instead. If desired, 32 bit backend applications can be replaced with respective 64 bit counterpart (if available from the respective Authors). PeaZip is a cross platform and cross widgetset application, meaning it can be compiled for different systems and widgetsets. Precompiled binaries Linux packages are built for GTK2, which offers modern look and feel and very functional system dialogs. Many other widgetsets are supported by Lazarus, the IDE used for PeaZip's development, including GTK1, Qt, WindCE, fpGUI and Carbon. If you want to compile PeaZip from sources see compile entry on this page. How do I make my system aware of PeaZip functionalities? PeaZip installable packages authomatically create application's icon, list PeaZip in available applications and create some ServiceMenu entries to reach most used program's functions (archive, open, extract here, extract to new folder). FreeDesktop_integration folder (featured both in installable and in standalone versions) contains .desktop files and simple instructions to add PeaZip to start menus and context menus of desktop environments following the FreeDesktop standards (like Gnome and KDE), and Nautilus scripts which can be manually copied to user's Nautilus script's folder to add PeaZip's functionalities to Gnome's context menu. I cannot run PeaZip due to unresolved dependencies. If the system report missing libraries the first time you are running PeaZip binary, you can generally find missing libraries on your installation media or, better, if an Internet connection is available, you can search them online using your installation or update manager, or even in a web based .rpm or .deb repository; generally missing libraries are standard, well known and widely available gtk/gkd components (the most common is libgdk_pixbuf library). What are hardware/software prerequisites? PeaZip should run on x86-compatible CPU due to some performance critical sections written in ASM; CPU and, mainly, RAM requisites are bound top the chosen algorithm and compression level, ranging to few KB for simpler algorithms (like when storing files without compression in tar/gz/zip formats) to above than a GB for most powerful and complex algorithms at highest compression level, like LZMA, PPMd and PAQ). Needless to say, it is the choice of the compression algorithm the most important factor in determination of job's speed, even if usually the most advanced algorithms are also the ones wich scales better in performances in multicore enviroments. As for software prerequisites, all needed software invoked by the frontend is included in PeaZip packages (being available under suitable licenses, as open source or royalty free) so no custom package is needed to be installed to make PeaZip work (with the possible exception of some standard gtk/gdk related libraries needed to run PeaZip, Gwrap and Pea binaries, wich may miss in some system, but are well known, trustable and widely available). If you don't want non open source software in your system, like unrar.so (which brings specific license restrictions about reverse engineering) or unace binary (closed source, royalty free), you simply need to delete them from /res/ path in program's folder. BSD PeaZip was succesfully compiled for BDSs by PC-BSD community OSX Lazarus IDE support for Carbon widgetset is alpha (a solution could be using alternative libraries, as Qt, but I would prefer the native, default widgetset), and moreover I can raraley have full access to OSX systems; however the Lazarus support for OSX is quickly progressing, and my interest in porting PeaZip to OSX platform remains high. I hope to be able to deploy PeaZip for OSX in future, and any help and feedback from users of Lazarus IDE on OSX will be welcome. How do I compile PeaZip? PeaZip is developed using
Lazarus/FreePascal;
FreePascal is a language similar to Delphi and Pascal (but higly
portable to different target systems); you will need Lazarus IDE to
compile the program's executables.
How
do I report an issue?The program will also need external resources like graphics and third parts binaries, so please refer to binaries packages to see what exactly you need for a full functional binary build of the program; read also the help file readme.txt in the source's package for more hints. You may also consider to contain the size of executables using strip/UPX, which are accessible from a graphic frontend in PeaZip itself (create archive interface, chose UPX as type in archive options). How do I contribute a translation? Language files are UTF-8
encoded text files which can be edited using any suitable text editor.
To create a new translation file you can: - copy en.txt (in PeaZip's
path in /res/lang subfolder) or any other language file, if you prefer
starting from another language, to a new file;
- edit lines 2..6 of the
document to enter language name, PeaZip's version (major.minor) the
translation is aimed to, translator's and last last revisor's name and
last revision date;
- translate the text after
the "variable_name: " part in "=== PeaZip text group ===" and "===
PeaLauncher text group ===" sections of the file (don't move or remove
lines, don't change the "variable_name: " part);
- translate the
mini-tutorial after "=== about text group ===" line (free editing).
A spreadsheet file to help translators can be found on project's
website, in "PeaZip translations" group.The spreadsheet shows variable name (column B), corresponding text string in english (column C) and a blank, yellow column (D) for typing the translated text strings. On the right, a column E (blue) will show the "variable_name: " part assembled with the translated string: the content of this area can be copied and paste to replace the text in "=== PeaZip text group ===" and "=== PeaLauncher text group ===" sections (the spreadsheet features one page for each of the two groups). Lines must be pasted in the original order (it is sufficient to sort them by column F). To allow reuse of translation files between different PeaZip releases (2.2 and beyond), older or newer translation files (with a release number, in 3rd line of the language file, different from the PeaZip release which is loading the language file) will be parsed out of order to get the translated text only for the variables featured in the PeaZip version which is loading the language file. As new releases are deployed, new text variables are declared on the top of the language file with release number specified in the variable name (txt_majorversion_minorversion) to help translators in updating existing language files; as well, some obsolete text lines can be removed from language file at each new version. From release 2.3, revision number was added after release number. IMPORTANT: revision number must not be
specified alongside release number in 3rd line of language files since
revisions shares the same text and are meant to deploy between-releases
updates, ie.e for bugfixing or for packaging additional translations or
resources.
Translated language files
can be sent to me using SourceForge's mail
or the address giorgiotani@interfree_removethis_.it
(don't forget to remove the _removethis_ part), to be evaluated for
inclusion in future updates or publication in "PeaZip translations"
packages group.
PeaZip's forum on SourceForge is certainly a good starting place where looking and then asking for help and for general discussion about the program. If you are accustomed with tracking systems you can also consider to submit bugs, feature requests etc... to proper categories in PeaZip's tracker on SourceForge. |
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PeaZip
project is hosted on:
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button (in
job's window). Advanced users can use those saved commands to speed up
building scripts, or for learning purpose about the underlying
executables. 
icon) or using
filters. However, most archivers will either follow the common
convention of saving the name of the directory in the root path of the
archive, creating archives which doesn't raise this problem in PeaZip's
archive browser. From version 2.1 PeaZip auto-switches to flat view
mode if succeds in detecting this problem.
