7-Zip was used as others, just gave it a folder to compress. No configuration.
As requested, here are some numbers on tar.zst of Linux source code (the test subject in the note): tar.zst: 196 MB, 5420 ms (using out-of-the box config and -T0 to let it use all the cores. Without it, it would be, 7570 ms) Pack: 194 MB, 1300 ms Slightly smaller size, and more than 4X faster. (Again, it is on my machine; you need to try it for yourself.) Honestly, ZSTD is great. Tar is slowing it down (because of its old design and being one thread). And it is done in two steps: first creating tar and then compression. Pack does all the steps (read, check, compress, and write) together, and this weaving helped achieve this speed and random access.
Benchmark 1: tar -c ./linux-6.8.2 | zstd -cT0 --zstd=strat=2,wlog=24,clog=16,hlog=17,slog=1,mml=5,tlen=0 > linux-6.8.2.tar.zst
Time (mean ± σ): 2.573 s ± 0.091 s [User: 8.611 s, System: 1.981 s]
Range (min … max): 2.486 s … 2.783 s 10 runs
Benchmark 2: bsdtar -c ./linux-6.8.2 | zstd -cT0 --zstd=strat=2,wlog=24,clog=16,hlog=17,slog=1,mml=5,tlen=0 > linux-6.8.2.tar.zst
Time (mean ± σ): 3.400 s ± 0.250 s [User: 8.436 s, System: 2.243 s]
Range (min … max): 3.171 s … 4.050 s 10 runs
Benchmark 3: busybox tar -c ./linux-6.8.2 | zstd -cT0 --zstd=strat=2,wlog=24,clog=16,hlog=17,slog=1,mml=5,tlen=0 > linux-6.8.2.tar.zst
Time (mean ± σ): 2.535 s ± 0.125 s [User: 8.611 s, System: 1.548 s]
Range (min … max): 2.371 s … 2.814 s 10 runs
Benchmark 4: ./pack -i ./linux-6.8.2 -w
Time (mean ± σ): 1.998 s ± 0.105 s [User: 5.972 s, System: 0.834 s]
Range (min … max): 1.931 s … 2.250 s 10 runs
Summary
./pack -i ./linux-6.8.2 -w ran
1.27 ± 0.09 times faster than busybox tar -c ./linux-6.8.2 | zstd -cT0 --zstd=strat=2,wlog=24,clog=16,hlog=17,slog=1,mml=5,tlen=0 > linux-6.8.2.tar.zst
1.29 ± 0.08 times faster than tar -c ./linux-6.8.2 | zstd -cT0 --zstd=strat=2,wlog=24,clog=16,hlog=17,slog=1,mml=5,tlen=0 > linux-6.8.2.tar.zst
1.70 ± 0.15 times faster than bsdtar -c ./linux-6.8.2 | zstd -cT0 --zstd=strat=2,wlog=24,clog=16,hlog=17,slog=1,mml=5,tlen=0 > linux-6.8.2.tar.zst
> it is done in two steps: first creating tar and then compression
Pipes (originally Unix, subsequently copied by MS-DOS) operate in parallel, not sequentially. This allows them to process arbitrarily large files on small memory without slow buffering.
Anyway, I do not expect an order of magnitude difference between tar.zst and Pack; after all, Pack is using Zstandard. What makes Pack fundamentally different from tar.zst is Random Access and other important factors like user experience. I shared some numbers on it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39803968 and you are encouraged to try them for yourself. Also, by adding Encryption and Locking to Pack, Random Access will be even more beneficial.