gzip-1.3.11 feedback

[Matthew Burgess]

Hi Paul,

I used the following script to install the latest release of gzip:

./configure --prefix=/usr
make
make check
make install
mv -v /usr/bin/{gzip,gunzip,zcat} /bin
ln -sv /bin/gzip /usr/bin/compress

The `mv' is required so that the installation is FHS compliant 
(http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html#SPECIFICOPTIONS2).  The symlink 
to `compress' is put in simply because it seems odd that `uncompress' would 
be present but not its counterpart.  Was there a specific reason that 
`compress' has been left out of the gzip package?

The changing of hardlinked files into small programs (e.g. gunzip) seems to 
directly conflict with the FHS, which states:

"If the gunzip and zcat programs exist, they must be symbolic or hard links to 
gzip".

I'm not quite sure why that requirement is there, so I'm quite happy to ignore 
it for now.  I just thought you might like to know that GNU and FHS aren't 
quite in agreement here :)

Regards,

Matt.