A recent release of Precizer 0.16.0, a console utility, has been published. Precizer is designed for checking the integrity of large file trees and identifying discrepancies after data synchronization. The project code is written in C language and distributed under the GPLv3 license. While pre-built builds were previously available for Linux and macOS, the key change in the new release is experimental support for Windows.
The Precizer project, which has been in development for over two years, is positioned as a small, fast, and convenient Command Line Interface (CLI) utility. It is used for tasks where traditional comparison of file metadata is insufficient. The program traverses the directory tree, calculates file checksums (SHA512), and saves the information to an SQLite database. This allows for comparison of databases created from different data sources to generate a list of missing files, extra files, and objects with mismatched checksums.
Precizer is primarily intended for checking the results of synchronization of large storages, backups, and disaster recovery copies. Unlike one-time runs of checksum utilities, Precizer maintains state between runs, enabling the resumption of long-running operations after an interruption. This feature is particularly valuable for file trees with a high volume of objects or large storage capacities measured in terabytes and petabytes.
In addition, Precizer can serve as a security monitoring tool to detect unauthorized changes to files, even in cases where metadata does not indicate content substitution. The utility offers an “–update” mode for updating a previously created database, allowing users to add new files, delete records of missing objects, and recalculate checksums of changed files. Users can also utilize path filters through “–ignore” and “–include” to limit the scope of inspection and comparison.
Users can access Precizer 0.16.0 ready-made archives for Linux x86_64, Linux AArch64, macOS arm64, and Windows x64. Linux provides portable, statically compiled ELF files that are not specific to a particular distribution. For building from source, users can use a regular Makefile or utilize Docker environments prepared for AlmaLinux, Alpine, Arch, Debian, Gentoo, Rocky, and Ubuntu.
The latest release includes two versions of the Windows build: a ZIP archive containing an executable file and the necessary DLL dependency, as well as a portable EXE file with no external dependencies. However, the Windows builds currently do not have a digital signature from the publisher. Furthermore, the portable EXE file may trigger warnings from Microsoft Defender, which is common for early unsigned binaries developed outside the traditional Windows application supply chain.