Changelog / Release Notes

SFTP Bandwidth Limitation

SFTP bandwidth limitation, distributed across multiple threads, using the -bandwidth switch.

New Switches and Features

• -sparse: On Windows, attempts to create a sparse file (typically for NTFS). This can halve the extraction time for gigantic files.
• -huge: Uses a different algorithm for file preparation. Useful for few but enormous files on filesystems that do not support sparse files.

Details: Discussion #213

• In the dir command, the -nodir switch now displays only files, excluding folders.
• In the hash command, a new -norecursion switch performs as expected (non-recursive hashing).
• The -always switch forces adding files even if their timestamp has not changed. Conceptually similar to -only, it can be repeated and used with wildcards.

Compatibility and Performance Improvements

• Enhanced iswindowsxp function for improved compatibility (in theory).
• Improved wide character support on Windows, including some emojis.
• Rewritten output function (potential for introduced bugs, but refactoring was necessary).
• Most source code comments are now in English.
• Improved local time handling, including for negative UTC offsets (e.g., USA).
• Added support for file hash calculations with an offset (implementation for future FRANZEN testing).

New Functions and Builds

• New kickstart function for downloading files from the internet or extracting them (if available) on Windows.

Details: Discussion #205

• Added release of zpaqfranz-full.exe (for 64-bit Windows), which includes statically linked resources (useful for offline systems; no other functional differences).

FRANZEN Encryptor

Details: Encode.su Thread

Essentially, this is an early (very immature) version of a future capability to encrypt zpaqfranz files (losing backward compatibility with zpaq) using a different encryption system and a separate password.

In the future (not yet implemented), it will enable double encryption for files: an outer layer (FRANZEN) and an inner layer (standard zpaq). This allows GDPR-compliant cloud storage where the provider knows the outer password, but only the user knows the inner one.

Key feature: Parallel integrity testing of the encrypted file. Instead of single-threaded hashing (reading one byte at a time to compute e.g., SHA-256), FRANZEN reads the encrypted file in blocks, achieving real-world performance exceeding 2GB/s on consumer hardware on non-spinning drives

This is a highly complex topic—treat it as experimental (which it is).

Service Note

I've opened a Discussions area on GitHub for suggestions and requests: zpaqfranz Discussions