gzexe
—
create auto-decompressing executables
The gzexe
utility uses
gzip(1) to compress executables,
producing executables that decompress on-the-fly when executed. This saves
disk space, at the cost of slower execution times. The original executables
are saved by copying each of them to a file with the same name with a
‘~’ suffix appended. After verifying that the compressed
executables work as expected, the backup files can be removed.
The options are as follows:
-d
- Decompress executables previously compressed by
gzexe
.
The gzexe
program refuses to compress
non-regular or non-executable files, files with a setuid or setgid bit set,
files that are already compressed using gzexe
or
programs it needs to perform on-the-fly decompression:
sh(1),
mktemp(1),
rm(1),
echo(1),
tail(1),
gzip(1), and
chmod(1).
The gzexe
utility replaces files by overwriting them
with the generated compressed executable. To be able to do this, it is
required that the original files are writable.