# iczelia/bzip3

A better and stronger spiritual successor to BZip2.

Repository: https://github.com/iczelia/bzip3
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/bzip3
Language: C
License: LGPL-3.0
License Family: copyleft
Topics: compression
Last push: 2026-07-22T13:20:03+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 68/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 93, release rhythm 18, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 1585, "days_push": 42, "days_rel": 385, "gap_med": 107, "n_releases_24m": 4}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 1226, forks 60 (observed 2026-08-28T04:04:03.209592+00:00)

## What it is
BZip3 is a lossless data compression tool and library written in C, positioned as a spiritual successor to BZip2 with higher compression ratios and better performance. It combines an order-0 context mixing entropy coder, a suffix-array-based Burrows-Wheeler transform, and an RLE with LZ77/PPM-style prediction pass, and excels at compressing text and code.

## Use cases
- compress large text or source code archives with better ratios than bzip2
- replace bzip2 in backup and archiving pipelines
- compress a big tar file to a smaller size than xz or zstd
- parallelize compression across multiple cores
- embed a high-ratio compressor in a C application via a library

## When to choose
- maximum compression ratio matters more than compression speed
- your data is text, code, or other highly redundant content
- you want a modern, actively maintained bzip2 alternative
- you need parallel compression and fast decompression

## When to avoid
- you need very fast compression over huge datasets (zstd is faster)
- you need compatibility with existing bzip2 or xz archives
- memory-constrained environments where large block buffers are a problem

## Facets
- artifact type: cli-tool
- maturity: active
- function: compression, cli
- domain: files, developer-tools
- platform: windows, cli, cross-platform
- tags: bzip2-successor, burrows-wheeler-transform, entropy-coding, data-compression, c-library, command-line, linux, macos

## Member repositories
- iczelia/bzip3 (main) score 68

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:04:03.209592+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T06:15:19.569395+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/iczelia/bzip3 (fetched 2026-08-28T04:04:03.209592+00:00, sha 30d29528224e)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.