Arch Linux Developers on the intention to implement support for the compression algorithm in the pacman package manager. Compared to the xz algorithm, using zstd will accelerate the compression and decompression of packages while maintaining the compression level. As a result, switching to zstd will lead to faster package installation.
Support for package compression using zstd will appear in the , but to install such packages, a version of libarchive with zstd support will be required. Therefore, before the distribution of packages compressed with zstd begins, users are advised to install libarchive version 3.3.3-1 or higher (a package with this version has been available for a year, so the required version of libarchive is likely already installed). Packages compressed with zstd will be delivered with the extension
.pkg.tar.zst.
Source: opennet.ru
