Zstd Compression Being Eyed For Use Within LLVM

LLVM developers are eyeing Zstandard "Zstd" use within this compiler stack as a secondary compression method to Zlib. Zstd could be used for compressing ELF debug sections, AST data structures, and other purposes within this open-source compiler stack.

Zstd's compression ratio is similar to DEFLATE but making it attractive to so many software projects is its much faster decompression speeds. Zstd continues seeing significant adoption for different compression needs and LLVM is now the latest major open-source project evaluating support for it.

Zstandard

A request for comments has been issued about supporting Zstd alongside the existing Zlib support within LLVM. There has been proof of concept code written and eyeing different areas that could stand to benefit from Zstd compression like AST data structures and serialized performance stats. So far the other upstream LLVM developers appear supportive of the idea of having Zstd support within LLVM.