Dear PowerArchiver Users,

We are pleased to announce immediate availability of PowerArchiver Command Line (PACL) 9.0 Beta 3. We have updated the latest PACL beta build with latest PowerArchiver compression engines, including the new ZIP engine, latest PA engine as well as all the other updates released in PowerArchiver 2018.

Improvements:

  • Breaking change – PACOMP and PAEXT naming – New PACOMP and PAEXT executables are named PACOMP32.EXE or PACOMP64.EXE, etc. We did this to make you aware that they are now 32 bit and 64 bit applications. You can simply rename/copy one that you wish to use to PACOMP.exe and it will work correctly with your old scripts. If you are using 64 bit Windows OS, please make sure to use 64 bit version of PACL due to speed and memory reasons.
  • Fix for registration – PACL9 executables are now all registered properly once you apply your registration name and code. As a reminder, this has to be done only once, and patched executables can be copied to other computers and servers.
  • New ZIP Deflate engine – We have a new multi-core deflate Zip engine that is used for stronger compression levels. You can use -c2, -c15, -c17, -c18, -c19 switches to use new zip deflate engine. Switches -c1, -c11, -c13 still use the old, faster engine. The new ZIP Deflate engine has top compression ratios for the Deflate codec and it is fully multi-core optimized, with the ability to automatically support as many cores/threads your computer/server has. It works on block level, so it will speed up compression of a single large file (not all of our competitors can do this) up to 16x! Currently, the debug output is enabled to show how many threads are used, it is based on strength/size ratio. Due to low requirement of ZIP the Deflate codec, same multi-core usage is possible on both 32 bit and 64 bit computers.
  • Updated .PA format engine – Updated PA format engine/codecs to latest PowerArchiver 2018 implementation
  • Optimized -p and -r switches – -p switch (relative paths) is now default and -r (recursive) can be used without any other path switches turned on.
  • Signed all executables – All executables and dlls are signed with our standard authenticode to make them work better with various AV software where PowerArchiver is already whitelisted.
  • Other smaller changes and improvements – Other smaller changes and improvements.

PowerArchiver Command Line (PACL) 9.0 Beta 3, with the Advanced Codec Pack (.PA), is now available from our download page. It is a free update for PACL, PowerArchiver Pro and PowerArchiver Toolbox users with valid maintenance. Thank you for your support since 1998!