HWLOC-COMPRESS-DIR(1)

💅 hwloc-compress-dir — bestie's guide to squishing XML topologies

okay so this is hwloc-compress-dir, straight out of the hwloc manual (section 1, if you're keeping score 🎀). She compresses a whole directory of XML topologies, and honestly? iconic behaviour.

---

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

hwloc-compress-dir [options] <inputdir> <outputdir>

two directories, bestie. one going in, one coming out. that's the whole vibe check. 🦋

---

🌸 OPTIONS 🌸

• -R, --reverse — un-squish it, queen 💅 — reverses the whole thing and uncompresses a directory that was previously compressed.
• -v, --verbose — she talks. a lot. displays verbose messages so you actually know what's happening 🔍
• --version — reports the version and dips out immediately. no further questions ✌️
• -h, --help — dumps the help message and exits. your little safety net 🫶

---

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

so hwloc-compress-dir takes an input directory full of XML exports and tries to compress it by computing topology diffs between them — using the hwloc-diff program, ngl that's the real MVP here. then each file gets copied into the output directory, and it ends up as either a diff (if it could be compressed, slay) or its original entire file if it couldn't. no cap, that's it.

she can also recompress a directory that was previously compressed. the way that works: all input files that are already in the output directory — compressed or not — are ignored. yeah, ignored. don't come for her. new input files get compressed as much as possible, as usual 💁‍♀️

for each file in the directory, the output filename is the same as the original if it's not compressed — otherwise its extension gets changed to .diff.xml. periodt. 🔥

compressed files are based on another non-compressed topology, and its name is stored in the refname topology diff attribute. (iykyk 🌈)

the generated output diff files may be used with hwloc-patch — just like any file generated by hwloc-diff. chefs kiss 👑

---

🎀 EXAMPLES 🎀

to compress the input files from directory in into directory out:

$ hwloc-compress-dir in out

that's it. that's the whole example. go off 💜

---

⭐ RETURN VALUE ⭐

upon successful execution, hwloc-compress-dir returns 0. we love a clean exit. 🎉

hwloc-compress-dir will return nonzero if any kind of error occurs — such as (but not limited to) failure to parse the command line. so like, if you type it wrong, that's on you bestie 😭

---

🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

hwloc(7), lstopo(1), hwloc-diff(1), hwloc-patch(1)

---

version 2.15.0, dated Sep 23, 2026 — mwah, bye bestie, go compress something 💋✨🧚