wpkg --compressor | -Z ...

Define the name of the compressor to use with the data tarball. The control files are always compressed with the z library (gzip format) whether or not the compression is useful or not or other compression would work better. It is done that way because the Debian package (dpkg) does not understand a control tarball compressed with anything else.

The supported compressors are listen here:

• best
• default
• gz | gzip
• bz2 | bzip2
• xz | 7z
• lzma
• none

The "default" value is used to not change the current value. The default is to use "best".

The "best" value means the system will try all the available compressors and use the smallest generated output. Note that the uncompressed data tarball, plus two compressed versions need to all fit in the memory at once. This option may not be a good choice on a computer, such as a virtual system, with little memory. In such a case, the safest to avoid out of memory errors is to use "none".

The "gz" or "gzip" compressor generates a .gz compatible file. This is the only compression Debian used up until around 2010 or so.

The "bz2" or "bzip2" compressor generate a .bz2 compatible file. This is often used with larger files. Somehow gzip compresses smaller files better than bzip2.

The "xz", "7z", and "lzma" compressors are not yet implemented.

The "none" entry means that the data tarball will not be compressed at all. In this case the compression level is ignored.

The --compressor option is often used in concert with the --zlevel option to define the level of compression to use. A smaller number uses less memory and generally goes faster. A larger number compresses better, but is slower and uses [much] more memory.