Google Snappy, available at http://code.google.com/p/snappy/
is a compression library designed for speed rather than compression ratios.

It is not a new concept by far. The Linux kernel currently uses LZO as the
 default fast compressor. Snappy works faster, though achieves less compression.

Google's code is written in C with a lot of C++. Some of the more interesting
 features that rely on C++ appear to have been elided from the open source
 version of Snappy.

Goals:
To get the codebase into a shape that can be accepted into the mainline
 Linux kernel and used with zram (http://code.google.com/p/compcache/).
Being able to compress vmlinux and initrd with Snappy is a secondary goal.
Same for support in Squashfs and other parts of the kernel that currently
 support LZO.

Results:
I cut out or ported to plain ANSI C the necessary code and headers.
To cause less confusion, I call this project (and files) csnappy.
The API looks right, but I welcome comments.
The code *has* been tested in kernel-space using a patched zram and it works.

The code has been tested in a qemu emulating a PowerPC Mac and ARMv5TE running
 Debian Wheezy.

I also use an ARMv6 Android phone for testing.

Testing on other hardware or platforms is welcome.

Note: The userspace tester is a hack, as is the shared library.

Someone wrote a perl wrapper for csnappy:
http://search.cpan.org/dist/Compress-Snappy/
https://github.com/gray/compress-snappy

Patch for upstream snappy tester is available: snappy_tester.patch
Patch for linux kernel is available: kernel_3_2_10.patch

Benchmark in userspace: userspace_benchmark.txt
Benchmark in kernel space with zram: zram_benchmark.txt