xz-utils (4.999.9beta+20100212-2) unstable; urgency=low The tiny xzdec and lzmadec decompressors have been moved to the new xzdec package. One can use xzcat (which is an abbreviation for “xz --decompress --stdout”) to replace them where space is not a premium. -- Jonathan Nieder Tue, 23 Feb 2010 08:24:10 -0600 xz-utils (4.999.9beta+20100117-1) unstable; urgency=low From this version on, xz produces sparse files by default when decompressing. This saves disk space when reproducing files with long runs of zero bytes, such as file system images. Implementing this feature requires seeking forward beyond the end of a file so that the operating system knows where to put in a hole. If you use xz --decompress to write to end of a file that is appended to at the same time by another process, this could cause concurrent output from the other command to be overwritten. This is a rare and quite weird thing to do. If you really want to do it, note that xz’s buffering strategy is not part of its documented interface; to safely interleave concurrent output from xz and another command, a construction such as xz --decompress input.xz | dd ibs=1k obs=1k >> log would be needed to avoid unpredictable results. -- Jonathan Nieder Tue, 02 Feb 2010 15:51:37 -0600