GZEXE(1)                                                      General Commands Manual                                                     GZEXE(1)

NAME

       gzexe - compress executable files in place

SYNOPSIS

       gzexe name ...

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

       -d     Decompress the given executables instead of compressing them.

SEE ALSO

       gzip(1), znew(1), zmore(1), zcmp(1), zforce(1)

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

       gzexe 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.

                                                                                                                                          GZEXE(1)