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- This is the README for bzip2/libzip2.
- This version is fully compatible with the previous public releases.
- ------------------------------------------------------------------
- This file is part of bzip2/libbzip2, a program and library for
- lossless, block-sorting data compression.
- bzip2/libbzip2 version 1.0.8 of 13 July 2019
- Copyright (C) 1996-2019 Julian Seward <jseward@acm.org>
- Please read the WARNING, DISCLAIMER and PATENTS sections in this file.
- This program is released under the terms of the license contained
- in the file LICENSE.
- ------------------------------------------------------------------
- Complete documentation is available in Postscript form (manual.ps),
- PDF (manual.pdf) or html (manual.html). A plain-text version of the
- manual page is available as bzip2.txt.
- HOW TO BUILD -- UNIX
- Type 'make'. This builds the library libbz2.a and then the programs
- bzip2 and bzip2recover. Six self-tests are run. If the self-tests
- complete ok, carry on to installation:
- To install in /usr/local/bin, /usr/local/lib, /usr/local/man and
- /usr/local/include, type
- make install
- To install somewhere else, eg, /xxx/yyy/{bin,lib,man,include}, type
- make install PREFIX=/xxx/yyy
- If you are (justifiably) paranoid and want to see what 'make install'
- is going to do, you can first do
- make -n install or
- make -n install PREFIX=/xxx/yyy respectively.
- The -n instructs make to show the commands it would execute, but not
- actually execute them.
- HOW TO BUILD -- UNIX, shared library libbz2.so.
- Do 'make -f Makefile-libbz2_so'. This Makefile seems to work for
- Linux-ELF (RedHat 7.2 on an x86 box), with gcc. I make no claims
- that it works for any other platform, though I suspect it probably
- will work for most platforms employing both ELF and gcc.
- bzip2-shared, a client of the shared library, is also built, but not
- self-tested. So I suggest you also build using the normal Makefile,
- since that conducts a self-test. A second reason to prefer the
- version statically linked to the library is that, on x86 platforms,
- building shared objects makes a valuable register (%ebx) unavailable
- to gcc, resulting in a slowdown of 10%-20%, at least for bzip2.
- Important note for people upgrading .so's from 0.9.0/0.9.5 to version
- 1.0.X. All the functions in the library have been renamed, from (eg)
- bzCompress to BZ2_bzCompress, to avoid namespace pollution.
- Unfortunately this means that the libbz2.so created by
- Makefile-libbz2_so will not work with any program which used an older
- version of the library. I do encourage library clients to make the
- effort to upgrade to use version 1.0, since it is both faster and more
- robust than previous versions.
- HOW TO BUILD -- Windows 95, NT, DOS, Mac, etc.
- It's difficult for me to support compilation on all these platforms.
- My approach is to collect binaries for these platforms, and put them
- on the master web site (https://sourceware.org/bzip2/). Look there. However
- (FWIW), bzip2-1.0.X is very standard ANSI C and should compile
- unmodified with MS Visual C. If you have difficulties building, you
- might want to read README.COMPILATION.PROBLEMS.
- At least using MS Visual C++ 6, you can build from the unmodified
- sources by issuing, in a command shell:
- nmake -f makefile.msc
- (you may need to first run the MSVC-provided script VCVARS32.BAT
- so as to set up paths to the MSVC tools correctly).
- VALIDATION
- Correct operation, in the sense that a compressed file can always be
- decompressed to reproduce the original, is obviously of paramount
- importance. To validate bzip2, I used a modified version of Mark
- Nelson's churn program. Churn is an automated test driver which
- recursively traverses a directory structure, using bzip2 to compress
- and then decompress each file it encounters, and checking that the
- decompressed data is the same as the original.
- Please read and be aware of the following:
- WARNING:
- This program and library (attempts to) compress data by
- performing several non-trivial transformations on it.
- Unless you are 100% familiar with *all* the algorithms
- contained herein, and with the consequences of modifying them,
- you should NOT meddle with the compression or decompression
- machinery. Incorrect changes can and very likely *will*
- lead to disastrous loss of data.
- DISCLAIMER:
- I TAKE NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY LOSS OF DATA ARISING FROM THE
- USE OF THIS PROGRAM/LIBRARY, HOWSOEVER CAUSED.
- Every compression of a file implies an assumption that the
- compressed file can be decompressed to reproduce the original.
- Great efforts in design, coding and testing have been made to
- ensure that this program works correctly. However, the complexity
- of the algorithms, and, in particular, the presence of various
- special cases in the code which occur with very low but non-zero
- probability make it impossible to rule out the possibility of bugs
- remaining in the program. DO NOT COMPRESS ANY DATA WITH THIS
- PROGRAM UNLESS YOU ARE PREPARED TO ACCEPT THE POSSIBILITY, HOWEVER
- SMALL, THAT THE DATA WILL NOT BE RECOVERABLE.
- That is not to say this program is inherently unreliable.
- Indeed, I very much hope the opposite is true. bzip2/libbzip2
- has been carefully constructed and extensively tested.
- PATENTS:
- To the best of my knowledge, bzip2/libbzip2 does not use any
- patented algorithms. However, I do not have the resources
- to carry out a patent search. Therefore I cannot give any
- guarantee of the above statement.
- WHAT'S NEW IN 0.9.0 (as compared to 0.1pl2) ?
- * Approx 10% faster compression, 30% faster decompression
- * -t (test mode) is a lot quicker
- * Can decompress concatenated compressed files
- * Programming interface, so programs can directly read/write .bz2 files
- * Less restrictive (BSD-style) licensing
- * Flag handling more compatible with GNU gzip
- * Much more documentation, i.e., a proper user manual
- * Hopefully, improved portability (at least of the library)
- WHAT'S NEW IN 0.9.5 ?
- * Compression speed is much less sensitive to the input
- data than in previous versions. Specifically, the very
- slow performance caused by repetitive data is fixed.
- * Many small improvements in file and flag handling.
- * A Y2K statement.
- WHAT'S NEW IN 1.0.x ?
- See the CHANGES file.
- I hope you find bzip2 useful. Feel free to contact the developers at
- bzip2-devel@sourceware.org
- if you have any suggestions or queries. Many people mailed me with
- comments, suggestions and patches after the releases of bzip-0.15,
- bzip-0.21, and bzip2 versions 0.1pl2, 0.9.0, 0.9.5, 1.0.0, 1.0.1,
- 1.0.2 and 1.0.3, and the changes in bzip2 are largely a result of this
- feedback. I thank you for your comments.
- bzip2's "home" is https://sourceware.org/bzip2/
- Julian Seward
- jseward@acm.org
- Cambridge, UK.
- 18 July 1996 (version 0.15)
- 25 August 1996 (version 0.21)
- 7 August 1997 (bzip2, version 0.1)
- 29 August 1997 (bzip2, version 0.1pl2)
- 23 August 1998 (bzip2, version 0.9.0)
- 8 June 1999 (bzip2, version 0.9.5)
- 4 Sept 1999 (bzip2, version 0.9.5d)
- 5 May 2000 (bzip2, version 1.0pre8)
- 30 December 2001 (bzip2, version 1.0.2pre1)
- 15 February 2005 (bzip2, version 1.0.3)
- 20 December 2006 (bzip2, version 1.0.4)
- 10 December 2007 (bzip2, version 1.0.5)
- 6 Sept 2010 (bzip2, version 1.0.6)
- 27 June 2019 (bzip2, version 1.0.7)
- 13 July 2019 (bzip2, version 1.0.8)
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