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diff --git a/pages/projects/squashfs-tools-ng/index.md b/pages/projects/squashfs-tools-ng/index.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ea81448 --- /dev/null +++ b/pages/projects/squashfs-tools-ng/index.md @@ -0,0 +1,113 @@ +# SquashFS Tools NG + +SquashFS is a highly compressed, read only file system often used as a root fs +on embedded devices, live systems or simply as a compressed archive format. + +Think of it as a .tar.gz that you can mount (or XZ, LZO, LZ4, ZSTD). + +This project originally started out as a fork +of [squashfs-tools](https://github.com/plougher/squashfs-tools) 4.3, after +encountering some short comings and realizing that there have been no updates +on the SourceForge site or mailing list for _years_. + +Even before the first public release, the fork was replaced with a complete +re-write after growing frustrated with the existing code base. For lack of a +better name, and because the original appeared to be unmaintained at the time, +the name squashfs-tools-ng was kept, although the published code base +technically never had any connection to squashfs-tools. + +Maintenance of the original squashfs-tools has since resumed, squashfs-tools +version 4.4 was released and continues to be maintained in parallel. The +utilities provided by squashfs-tools-ng offer alternative tooling and are +intentionally named differently, so both packages can be installed side by +side. + +**The actual guts of squashfs-tools-ng are encapsulated in a library +with a generic API** designed to make SquashFS available to other applications +as an embeddable, extensible archive format (or to simply read, write or +manipulate SquashFS file systems). + +The utility programs are largely command line wrappers around the library. The +following tools are provided: + + - `gensquashfs` can be used to produce SquashFS images from `gen_init_cpio` + like file listings or simply pack an input directory. Can use an SELinux + contexts file (see selabel_file(5)) to generate SELinux labels. + - `rdsquashfs` can be used to inspect and unpack SquashFS images. + - `sqfs2tar` can turn a SquashFS image into a tarball, written to stdout. + - `tar2sqfs` can turn a tarball (read from stdin) into a SquashFS image. + - `sqfsdiff` can compare the contents of two SquashFS images. + +The library and the tools that produce SquashFS images are designed to operate +deterministically. Same input will produce byte-for-byte identical output. +Failure to do so is treated as a critical bug. + +## Version history + +| Date | Release | +| ---------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | +| 2020-06-13 | [squashfs-tools-ng 1.0.0 is released](https://infraroot.at/pub/squashfs/squashfs-tools-ng-1.0.0.tar.xz) | +| 2020-05-03 | [squashfs-tools-ng 0.9.1 is released](https://infraroot.at/pub/squashfs/squashfs-tools-ng-0.9.1.tar.xz) | +| 2020-03-30 | [squashfs-tools-ng 0.9.0 is released](https://infraroot.at/pub/squashfs/squashfs-tools-ng-0.9.tar.xz) | +| 2019-12-30 | [squashfs-tools-ng 0.8.0 is released](https://infraroot.at/pub/squashfs/squashfs-tools-ng-0.8.tar.xz) | +| 2019-10-08 | [squashfs-tools-ng 0.7.0 is released](https://infraroot.at/pub/squashfs/squashfs-tools-ng-0.7.tar.xz) | +| 2019-08-27 | [squashfs-tools-ng 0.6.1 is released](https://infraroot.at/pub/squashfs/squashfs-tools-ng-0.6.1.tar.xz) | +| 2019-08-22 | [squashfs-tools-ng 0.6.0 is released](https://infraroot.at/pub/squashfs/squashfs-tools-ng-0.6.tar.xz) | +| 2019-07-28 | [squashfs-tools-ng 0.5.0 is released](https://infraroot.at/pub/squashfs/squashfs-tools-ng-0.5.tar.xz) | +| 2019-07-17 | [squashfs-tools-ng 0.4.2 is released](https://infraroot.at/pub/squashfs/squashfs-tools-ng-0.4.2.tar.xz) | +| 2019-07-07 | [squashfs-tools-ng 0.4.1 is released](https://infraroot.at/pub/squashfs/squashfs-tools-ng-0.4.1.tar.xz) | +| 2019-07-04 | [squashfs-tools-ng 0.4.0 is released](https://infraroot.at/pub/squashfs/squashfs-tools-ng-0.4.tar.xz) | +| 2019-06-30 | [squashfs-tools-ng 0.3.0 is released](https://infraroot.at/pub/squashfs/squashfs-tools-ng-0.3.tar.xz) | +| 2019-06-13 | [squashfs-tools-ng 0.2.0 is released](https://infraroot.at/pub/squashfs/squashfs-tools-ng-0.2.tar.xz) | +| 2019-06-09 | [squashfs-tools-ng 0.1.0 is released](https://infraroot.at/pub/squashfs/squashfs-tools-ng-0.1.tar.xz) | + +## Documentation + +The doxygen reference for the current release of libsquashfs is available +here: [libsquashfs API reference](doxydoc/index.html). + +A writeup on the [SquashFS on-disk format](https://git.infraroot.at/squashfs-tools-ng.git/tree/doc/format.txt) +is also available. + +Man pages are provided for the individual tools. + +## Getting the Source Code + +[Release tar balls](https://infraroot.at/pub/squashfs/) are published in the +pub directory. + +The Git tree is hosted on [git.infraroot.at](https://git.infraroot.at/squashfs-tools-ng.git/) +as well as on [GitHub](https://github.com/AgentD/squashfs-tools-ng). + +Those two Git trees are kept in sync and issues & pull-requests on the GitHub +pages are accepted. + +## Installing + +A number of Linux distributions already offer squashfs-tools-ng through +their package management system. Replogy maintains an up to date list: + +[](https://repology.org/project/squashfs-tools-ng/versions) + +Pre-compiled binary packages for Windows are +available [here](https://infraroot.at/pub/squashfs/windows). + +Those packages contain the binaries for the tools, the SquashFS library and +pre-compiled dependency libraries (zstd, lzo, lzma; others are built in). + +The binary package does not contain any source code. The corresponding source +code from which the 3rd party libraries have been built is also available for +download at the above location. + +The headers and import libraries to build applications that use libsquashfs +are included. For convenience, the pre-compiled, 3rd party dependency libraries +also come with headers and import libraries. + +## Contact + +Besides the issue tracker on GitHub, you can reach me via e-mail as *goliath* +on *infraroot.at*. + +There is currently no official mailing list. For the time being I'll use +the existing [squashfs-tools mailing list](https://sourceforge.net/p/squashfs/mailman/) +for announcments, until I'm booted off. |