Tools
tack
The tack utility is a standalone stream compressor that uses the same compression code WANProxy does. It is the program for which the compression code was originally developed and is part of the source distribution today as it is very useful for debugging, performance testing and to a limited extent (as it does not currently support a persistent dictionary, which the original tack did) in file deduplication.
Its usage is very straightforward, when given the -c argument, it will act as a compressor, when given -d a decompressor. In both cases, output goes to standard output and input comes from either standard input or named files passed as command line arguments.
The -T option can be used to get timing information about compression and decompression operations and -S will show individual time samples for each operation. The -Q option may be specified to disable output (useful for macrobenchmarks.) Timing information goes to standard output using the common WANProxy logging mechanism.
xcdump
The xcdump utility can take a stream encoded using the WANProxy compression algorithm and print a human-readable description of the contents of the encoded stream, i.e. the exact sequence of references and declarations that are used. Like tack, its output goes to standard output and input comes from either standard input or named files passed as command line arguments.