APEX
COMPRESS
v1.1.0-STABLE
Source Code
APEX is designed around parallel execution, content-defined deduplication, and integrated recovery rather than a single fixed compression pipeline.
00000000 41 50 58 31 01 04 00 00 00 00 20 00 1a 4f b2 c9 |APX1...... ..O..| 00000010 00 00 00 02 00 00 00 14 70 61 74 68 2f 74 6f 2f |........path/to/| 00000020 64 61 74 61 2e 62 69 6e 64 65 64 75 70 3a 31 32 |data.bindedup:12| 00000030 38 62 69 74 5f 68 61 73 68 5f 63 68 65 63 6b 30 |8bit_hash_check0|
Many popular archivers rely on single-threaded designs or a single fixed compression pipeline.
Six decoupled stages operating in zero-copy memory buffers to extract maximum mathematical density.
Standard engines fail on binaries and textures because byte entropy is too chaotic. Apex analyzes incoming streams and applies reversible Delta, Planar, or BCJ machine-code filters to artificially collapse Shannon entropy before compression starts.
Fixed-size blocks desynchronize when a single byte is prepended. Apex uses Content-Defined Chunking (FastCDC) to detect rolling hash cut-points, computing 128-bit BLAKE2b fingerprints to eliminate identical blocks.
Instead of blindly applying LZMA to everything, Apex runs qualification heats across candidate engines (Zstandard, Brotli, LZMA, Deflate) on worker threads. The champion algorithm for that specific block wins the container payload.
Archives put in cold storage inevitably face storage bit-rot. Apex bakes Cauchy Reed-Solomon erasure coding directly into the block headers, enabling automatic mathematical recovery of damaged or corrupted sectors during extraction.
Zero dependency on external OpenSSL libraries. Payloads are encrypted with hardware-accelerated AES-256-CTR and authenticated with an Encrypt-then-MAC HMAC-SHA256 digest derived via 100,000 rounds of PBKDF2.
Memory-mapped input minimizes intermediate user-space buffering. Large files are memory-mapped directly into kernel address space, keeping peak working memory tightly bounded regardless of input size.
Hardware: AMD Ryzen 3 3250U (2 cores, 4 threads, 2.6 GHz), 8 GB DDR4, NVMe PCIe 3.0 SSD. Tested on Canterbury Corpus (282 MB scaled).
Zero-copy mmap prevents the OS from buffering massive files in RAM, keeping the process footprint flat.
From microsecond archive diffing to zero-copy selective extraction and native Python integration.
Extract specific files or glob patterns directly without decompressing skipped files to disk or allocating redundant memory buffers.
apex x archive.apx -i "*.json" apex x vault.apx path/to/file
Inspect changes between two archives instantly. Compares manifests, added/deleted files, modifications, and net byte deltas in milliseconds.
apex diff release_v1.apx v2.apx apex diff a.apx b.apx --json
Direct Python SDK bindings for pipelines, automated systems, and in-memory byte buffer tournaments without spawning subprocesses.
import apex
apex.compress("data", "out.apx")
apex.compress_bytes(payload)
Native tab-completion scripts for Bash, Zsh, and Fish, plus Windows Explorer context menu registry script and macOS Finder Quick Actions.
apex completions zsh reg import windows_context.reg
No nagware screens. No subscription paywalls. No closed tiers. ApexCompress is free and open-source software forever.
Use ApexCompress inside your company, on your production servers, or in commercial backup pipelines without paying a single cent.
No tracking, no analytics pinging home, and zero phone-home licensing checks. Runs completely air-gapped on isolated nodes.
GPLv3 ensures that if anyone forks or enhances the engine, their changes must remain open-source for the entire community forever.
Compiled natively with Nuitka into zero-dependency standalone binaries. No Python runtime required.
Install Apex with automatic shell completions (Bash, Zsh, Fish) and cryptographic SHA-256 validation via the official Homebrew tap.
brew install qxmcu/tap/apex
Verified on macOS 12+ (x86_64 and Apple Silicon via Rosetta/Native).
curl -LO https://github.com/qxmcu/apex/releases/download/v1.1.0/apex-v1.1.0-darwin-x86_64.tar.gz tar -xzf apex-v1.1.0-darwin-x86_64.tar.gz chmod +x apex && sudo mv apex /usr/local/bin/
Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Arch, Alpine. Standalone zero-dependency native ELF executable.
curl -LO https://github.com/qxmcu/apex/releases/download/v1.1.0/apex-v1.1.0-linux-x86_64.tar.gz tar -xzf apex-v1.1.0-linux-x86_64.tar.gz chmod +x apex && sudo mv apex /usr/local/bin/
Includes Explorer right-click context menu integration script, UTF-8 console output, and O_BINARY safety.
curl -LO https://github.com/qxmcu/apex/releases/download/v1.1.0/apex-v1.1.0-windows-x86_64.zip tar -xf apex-v1.1.0-windows-x86_64.zip .\apex.exe --help