lez v0.29.0

Behaviour Changes

• A Theme Takes the Place of LS_COLORS: When lez reads a theme.yml, it no longer reads LS_COLORS. The system's dircolors often sets that variable for every program, and it used to override a theme's directory, executable and other colours. LEZ_COLORS and EZA_COLORS are still laid over the theme, and a glob there now colours a name ahead of the theme's filenames, extensions and mimetypes entries for it. To keep a colour from LS_COLORS beside a theme, give it in the theme or in LEZ_COLORS. Copying LS_COLORS into LEZ_COLORS wholesale is not a substitute, as some dircolors keys (tw, su, do) mean other things there. Under --no-config without --theme, LS_COLORS is read as before (eza#1700, eza#1224, #156).

• QUOTING_STYLE Is Read: GNU ls's variable now sets the default quoting, after LEZ_QUOTING_STYLE and EZA_QUOTING_STYLE and before the configuration file:

  • literal quotes nothing.
  • shell and shell-escape are auto.
  • shell-always and shell-escape-always quote every name.
  • GNU's c, escape and locale have no counterpart and are passed over.

  A shell that sets the variable for ls now changes lez too. Set LEZ_QUOTING_STYLE or pass --quotes to keep lez's own style (eza#584, #157).

• Case Variants in LS_COLORS: Globs still ignore letter case. Two that differ only in case and give different colours now each match only their own case, as in GNU ls since coreutils 9.2: *.c=33:*.C=36 tells C sources from C++ ones. Globs in LEZ_COLORS are weighed with those in LS_COLORS as one list (eza#1576, #154).

Features & Enhancements

• --explain: List each entry with the rule that chose the colour of its name and the one that chose its icon. The colour rule is one of:

  • a glob, with the variable it was given in;
  • a theme entry, and any LEZ_COLORS glob laid over it;
  • a built-in file type;
  • a file kind such as di, ex or ln=target.

  The answers come from the code the listing runs, so they cannot drift from what it prints (eza#1954, #157).

• Named Themes: --theme=NAME, LEZ_THEME (or EZA_THEME), or name under [theme] in the configuration file read themes/NAME.yml or themes/NAME.yaml from the configuration directory instead of theme.yml. A name holding a directory is a path, and a theme that is not there is an error (eza#1945, #157).

• .zip Inspection: --inspect-archives lists the files of a .zip as it does those of a .tar. The reader takes them from the archive's central directory and decompresses nothing. It handles ZIP64, archive comments and data put in front of the archive, and reads names as UTF-8 or CP437 (eza#600, #157).

• --owner-width: --owner-width=COLS, or owner_width in the configuration file, cuts user and group names wider than COLS display columns and ends them in …. Numeric IDs and --json stay whole (eza#1760, eza#1948, #157).

• --group-dotfiles-first: List dotfiles before the rest within each directory group. With --group-directories-first --sort=extension, that lists directories, then dotfiles, then the other files by extension (eza#1920, #157).

• -N / --literal: Print names without quoting, as ls -N does: the same as --quotes=never. The last of --quotes, --no-quotes and --literal wins (eza#584, #157).

• .tzst Archives: Zstandard tarballs named .tzst get the compressed colour and icon (eza#1956, #154).

Bug Fixes & Hardening

• Control Characters in Archive Entries: --inspect-archives printed an entry's path as the archive stored it. A crafted .tar could send escape sequences to the terminal, and a newline split the row. Control characters in an entry are now shown as escapes, as they are in names on disk (#157).
• Directory Icons: .atom, .idea, .rvm and .zsh_sessions are always directories, but their icons were filed under file names, where a directory is never looked up. They are now filed with the directory names, so they show (eza#1940, eza#1943, #153).

Documentation

• One Spelling of "color": --help, the shell completions and the option lists in the README and lez(1) say "color". --help also names the --colour, --colour-scale and --colour-scale-mode aliases, so a search for either spelling finds every colour option (eza#1243, #155).
• Upstream Triage: docs/UPSTREAM_TRIAGE.md is refreshed against upstream as of 2026-10-05, with the open bugs re-run against v0.28.5. Every pending decision is now settled; the SF Symbol overlays of eza#1949 are declined (#154, #156, #157).

Testing & Quality Assurance

• Debug Builds Within a Small Stack: Building the command-line parser took a frame of nearly a mebibyte in a debug build, the whole of a Windows main thread's stack, and a few more flags overflowed it. Each help heading's flags are now added by a function of their own, and a test holds the build to half a mebibyte (#157).
• Archive Readers Under Corrupt Input: A fuzz_zip_archive target joins the fuzz canary, and a test overwrites a .zip byte by byte and cuts it at every length (#157).

Checksums

362d7b988165300330e74b00de212f464017ed134df985b5878905461dc168a6  ./completions-v0.29.0.tar.gz
6ea7229f156b77720f8a88fc4d9be6abdc56a6a5b228598fa4b4495844b96f1b  ./lez_0.29.0-1_amd64.deb
a20ac9657a0437456fbb24c1ce9b826b2a2ea19a1637862150c37d23853f04d5  ./lez_aarch64-apple-darwin.tar.gz
1666050ca9ddd03ef8e6489b14f5cc143652042cd35e1f54edf2d7063d77cf6b  ./lez_aarch64-pc-windows-msvc.zip
b2e0160560d7020729bfb41e6444ceae45bc7efcbbc388931dbe417bfd1c90a9  ./lez_x86_64-apple-darwin.tar.gz
36ed05ab0a8ab7ee448ad85a415e6c1454d136bb8d823cb004e4d3c70eb79983  ./lez_x86_64-pc-windows-msvc.zip
26cb35ff820ddcee99acfac3dbc282476a88e693dec9dfd909dfd3e325158a5a  ./lez_x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu.tar.gz
a9b0ba02a023647b5c5e28e8d1e6289db15a3ae3653d07ea7dcaea52003c7586  ./man-v0.29.0.tar.gz