I am planning on putting CDeX onto my thumb drive. Since CDeX is portable already (based on https://portableapps.com/node/1010) I'm entertaining the idea of compressing the exe to see if it would improve the performance while running from the thumb drive.
I was looking at different compression options and I stumbled across an open source compression tool call PackMan that is supposed to compress exe files. Since I've never heard of it before I was wondering if anybody else has used it and if it is any good.
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Not sure about that one, but I've used Peazip
http://peazip.sourceforge.net/
Among all the other formats, it has a UPX frontend that I use, and a natively portable edition can be downloaded. My only complaint is the config options for the UPX frontend are too basic and allow almost no tweaking. But the 'best' setting works well despite that.
It's pretty much the de facto standard FOSS exe-packer.
Most AntiVirus programs can handle UPX'ed files.
If you use one of the more "exotic" packers there's a risk that
AV's won't be able to scan the contents of the file.
In that case it will get flagged as a "Virus","Trojan" or "Suspicious" .
Depending on the settings of the AV this may cause the file to be
deleted from your drive.
Get UPX here :
http://sourceforge.net/projects/upx/
There are many GUI's for UPX f.ex :
http://sourceforge.net/projects/upxshell/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/upxcmd/
I was going to compare it to UPX, but I don't see any way to unpack files compressed with Packman. I am definitely NOT going to use Packman.
Vintage!
How often do you unpack upxed files?
For me effectiveness is far more important (and I'm going to test Packman as soon as I have time for it)
"Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do." Asimov
I unpack such files regularly. Whenever I want to pack new files that are already UPXed, I unpack them and repack them since they may have been compressed with an old version or with low compression settings (I usually get significantly better compression). Or let's say there's a problem with a packed file I didn't foresee and I've already deleted the old file (because keeping backups takes up space, which defeats the purpose). Looks like I'm SOL.
Vintage!
Being able to unpack a file back to a binary-equivalent of the pre-packaged file is pretty much a requirement. If this isn't available, the antivirus issue above is a possibility. Also, when later versions come out with better compression, it can be useful to unpack and repack. I've done this with UPX before.
Also, I know the base code of Packman is 'public domain' but they don't mention the license of the the compression routine. Unless the entire thing is under the GPL or a GPL-compatible license, it can't be used to compress GPL licensed binaries. And, unless the license allows compressing commercial software, it can't compress those.
That's why we use UPX. It's GPL licensed with exceptions for all other software provided the UPX binary bits are unaltered. This means it's legal for all software.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!