Software update: 7-Zip 9.31 alpha

The developers behind 7-Zip have released version 9.31 alpha of their open source archiving program. 7-Zip can handle a variety of compression formats, including zip, cab, rar, arj, lzh, chm, gzip, bzip2, z, tar, cpio, rpm, deb, and of course the proprietary 7z. Furthermore, the software is capable of opening iso files and NSIS installation packages. The included release notes look like this:

What’s new after 7-Zip 9.30 alpha:

• 7-Zip now can create multivolume SFX archives in 7z format.
• ZIP, NSIS, HFS, AR support was improved.
• 7-Zip now supports files larger than 4 GiB in ISO archives
• Improved compression ratio in 7z format with maximum or ultra level for
  executable files (EXE and DLL) that are larger than 16 MB (improved BCJ2 filter).
• Improved support for file pathnames longer than 260 characters.
• CRC and SHA checksum calculation for files can be called via Explorer’s context menu.
• 7-Zip File Manager now also takes into account the numbers in filenames for sorting order.
• 7-Zip File Manager can open files in “Parser” mode via “Open Archive > #” context
  menu command. It shows the list of archives inside file.
• Command line version:
  • new -t# switch to open file in “Parser” mode and show the list of archives inside file.
  • new -stx{Type} switch to exclude archive type from using.
  • -scs switch now supports UTF-16 encoding.
• The bugs were fixed:
  • 7-Zip could work incorrectly in decompression of more than one
    multi-volume archive in one command.
  • 7-Zip 9.24 alpha – 9.30 alpha versions could not extract ZIP archives
    encrypted with PKWARE-AES method.
• New localization: Irish.

What’s new after 7-Zip 9.29 alpha:

• The BUG in 7-Zip 9.26 alpha – 9.29 alpha versions was fixed. These alpha versions could not open non-solid 7z archive, if some files were skipped during creation of that archive. That problem is also related to 7z archives created in solid mode, if each solid block contains no more than one file. Note: 7-Zip skips files that were open for writing by another application and shows warning in that case.