SquashFS Tools 4.7 Released: "20% To More Than Ten Times Faster"
SquashFS-Tools 4.7 is out today as a big feature update to the user-space utilities for creating/modifying/extracting SquashFS read-only file-system images. SquashFS 4.7 delivers some big performance improvements and other nice enhancements.
Phillip Lougher announced the release of SquashFS Tools 4.7 this evening and reports that it can be "20% to more than ten times faster" depending upon the source media and input files. There is also a rewritten help system, new options to help in building reporducible SquashFS file-system images, and other improvements.
The big speed-up with SquashFS Tools 4.7 is now by reading files in parallel from the input directories. When dealing with small files and depending upon the storage medium, this can net some really big performance improvements compared to prior SquashFS Tools releases.
The v4.7 release announcement explains:
For helping create reproducible SquashFS images, mksquash and sqfstar extend the low-level timestamp setting options and adds some new short-hand options to make it easier setting different values.
More details on the big SquashFS-Tools 4.7 release via the mailing list announcement.
Phillip Lougher announced the release of SquashFS Tools 4.7 this evening and reports that it can be "20% to more than ten times faster" depending upon the source media and input files. There is also a rewritten help system, new options to help in building reporducible SquashFS file-system images, and other improvements.
The big speed-up with SquashFS Tools 4.7 is now by reading files in parallel from the input directories. When dealing with small files and depending upon the storage medium, this can net some really big performance improvements compared to prior SquashFS Tools releases.
The v4.7 release announcement explains:
"1. Mksquashfs now reads files in parallel from the input directories
1.1. This can significantly increase I/O when reading lots of small files, and/or the input media benefits from parallel reading e.g. modern SSD drives, or network filesystems etc.
1.2 In cases where speed of I/O is the bottleneck in Mksquashfs, this can make Mksquashfs run significantly faster, in some cases Mksquashfs can be more than ten times faster.
1.3. New -small-readers option to specify number of parallel small file reader threads (files less than a block size). Default 4 threads.
1.4. New -block-readers option to specify number of parallel block reader threads (files one block or larger). Default 4 threads.
1.5. New -single-reader option to specify a single reader thread, similar to previous Mksquashfs versions."
For helping create reproducible SquashFS images, mksquash and sqfstar extend the low-level timestamp setting options and adds some new short-hand options to make it easier setting different values.
More details on the big SquashFS-Tools 4.7 release via the mailing list announcement.