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upx

Installation

Terminal window
npm i -g @repobuddy/upx

Verify:

Terminal window
upx --help

upx is meant to be installed once, globally. That is what makes a range match pay off: a single install serves every caller on that major, from any directory.

It is not ambient

Section titled “It is not ambient”

npx ships with npm, so it is on every machine that has Node. upx only exists after that global install. Anything that has to work on a machine you do not control should stay on npx <pkg>@<exact>.

Name collision

Section titled “Name collision”

The package is scoped @repobuddy/upx because the unscoped upx name on npm belongs to a wrapper around UPX, the executable packer — an unrelated tool.

The binary installed here is still upx. If you also use the executable packer, the two collide on PATH; install only one of them globally.

Using it from a package script

Section titled “Using it from a package script”

Inside your own package, a declared dependency is better served by your package manager’s .bin resolution — pnpm exec, npm run, or node_modules/.bin directly. upx earns its place where there is no declared dependency to lean on: ad-hoc calls, agent skills, and scripts that run across many repositories.