How to XZ compress directory WITHOUT tar?

Question

I know how to compress a directory with xz using tar, but is it possible to compress a directory using xz WITHOUT tar?

If I try:

xz -z myDir

Then the following error is retured:

xz: myDir: Is a directory, skipping

You could use 7z. The world doesn't revolve around XZ. – Artem S. Tashkinov May 16 '23 at 20:39 — Artem S. Tashkinov, May 16 '23 at 20:39
Unfortunately, 7z isn't available to me, – Fred May 16 '23 at 20:44 — Fred, May 16 '23 at 20:44

score 6 · Accepted Answer · answered May 16 '23 at 20:12

xz, like compress, gzip and other Unix-style compressors, is a single-file compressor: it outputs .xz files which are always decompressed to a single file.

Because of that, compressing directories or multiple files requires a container of some sort (if you want to be able to recover the separate files). That’s typically a tar archive, but it could be a cpio archive or some other format.

How to XZ compress directory WITHOUT tar?

1 Answers1