Create tar.xz file with threads and progress bar

tar_xz_tips.md

tar xz tips

Compress a directory using multiple threads and show a progress bar with this script:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

# example: tar_cJf.sh ./directory > directory.tar.xz

SOURCE="$1"

# get source size
SOURCE_SIZE=$(du -sk "${SOURCE}" | cut -f1)

# archive and compress
tar -cf - "${SOURCE}" | pv -p -s "${SOURCE_SIZE}k" | xz -6 --threads=6 -c -
 

sources:

• https://superuser.com/questions/168749/is-there-a-way-to-see-any-tar-progress-per-file
• https://matoski.com/article/xz-compress-directory/
• https://tukaani.org/xz/
• https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/an-introduction-to-file-compression-tools-on-linux-servers
• https://www.rootusers.com/gzip-vs-bzip2-vs-xz-performance-comparison/

Thanks for this tips !
For information, --threads=6 can be withdrawn for the moment because it has not been implemented

Actually, man xz on version 5.2.4 give :

Threaded decompression hasn't been implemented yet. It will only work on files that contain multiple blocks with size information in block headers. All files compressed in multi-threaded mode meet this condition, but files compressed in single-threaded mode don't even if --block-size=size is used.

A small tips : the option -v to xz show a progress indicator