GZEXE(1) General Commands Manual GZEXE(1)

# [NAME](#NAME)

gzexe - compress executable files in place

# [SYNOPSIS](#SYNOPSIS)

**gzexe** *name ...*

# [DESCRIPTION](#DESCRIPTION)

The **gzexe** utility allows you to compress executables in place and have them automatically uncompress and execute when you run them (at a penalty in performance). For example if you execute \`\`gzexe /usr/bin/gdb'' it will create the following two files:

```


    -rwxr-xr-x  1 root root 1026675 Jun  7 13:53 /usr/bin/gdb


    -rwxr-xr-x  1 root root 2304524 May 30 13:02 /usr/bin/gdb~
```

/usr/bin/gdb~ is the original file and /usr/bin/gdb is the self-uncompressing executable file. You can remove /usr/bin/gdb~ once you are sure that /usr/bin/gdb works properly.

This utility is most useful on systems with very small disks.

# [OPTIONS](#OPTIONS)

[**-d**](#d)

Decompress the given executables instead of compressing them.

# [SEE ALSO](#SEE_ALSO)

[**gzip**(1)](/man/os/gzip/gzip.1), [**znew**(1)](/man/os/gzip/znew.1), [**zmore**(1)](/man/os/gzip/zmore.1), [**zcmp**(1)](/man/os/gzip/zcmp.1), [**zforce**(1)](/man/os/gzip/zforce.1)

# [CAVEATS](#CAVEATS)

The compressed executable is a shell script. This may create some security holes. In particular, the compressed executable relies on the PATH environment variable to find **gzip** and some standard utilities (**basename**, **chmod**, **ln**, **mkdir**, **mktemp**, **rm**, **sleep**, and **tail**).

# [BUGS](#BUGS)

The **gzexe** command attempts to retain the original file attributes on the compressed executable, but you may have to fix them manually in some cases, using **chmod** or **chown**.

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Document: gzexe(1) from gzip 1.15-r0 (Chainguard OS)
Source: https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/gzip.git