compress

btrfs tool that makes it possible to change the +c flags recursively on existing files

compress vs btrfs-progs

There are some tricks to perform compression of existing files and folder in more efficient way using btrfs userspace tools, they are however very hard to use, require you to read incredibly long manuals and require deep knowledge and understanding of btrfs. They also require you to have superuser rights.

compress is, on other hand, designed for average users, who simply want to enjoy transparent compression on linux just as Windows users can. You can simply compress whole folder (as long as it belongs to you) with no need for superuser as this:

# -r is enough, but shows no progress
compress -vr some_folder

installation

sudo cp src/compress /usr/local/bin

known issues

compress doesn't check if files that are being compressed are open or not, it's not recommended to use compress on files that are open by other processes, since compress will unlink them, resulting in open file descriptors to deleted files.