Show HN: WinZST > 7-Zip fork with first-class compressed tar support on Windows

#1

Post by firebadnofire » Sat, Sep 05, 2026, 3:58 AM UTC

WinZST is a 7-Zip fork that extracts compressed tar archives directly to their final directory instead of materializing an intermediate `.tar`.

In one 11.8 GiB `.tar.gz` test containing mostly video, WinZST took 51.87s from archive → `foo/`; 7-Zip took 103.53s across `.tar.gz` → `.tar` → `foo/`.

Show HN: WinZST > 7-Zip fork with first-class compressed tar support on Windows
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Re: Show HN: WinZST > 7-Zip fork with first-class compressed tar support on Windows

#2

Post by paguasmar » Sat, Sep 05, 2026, 8:38 AM UTC

It's great that you found a way to simplify the extraction algorithm.

Can you share the PC specs you used to run the test for both the WinZST and 7-Zip experiment?

Re: Show HN: WinZST > 7-Zip fork with first-class compressed tar support on Windows

#3

Post by michael_luog » Sat, Sep 05, 2026, 10:32 AM UTC

Besides speed, we should check the compression ratio also when comparing compression software.

Re: Show HN: WinZST > 7-Zip fork with first-class compressed tar support on Windows

#4

Post by TinyFiles_AT1 » Sun, Sep 06, 2026, 11:13 AM UTC

michael_luog wrote: post #3

Besides speed, we should check the compression ratio also when comparing compression software.

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