Re: [lzlib] Questions regarding minilzip

[Antonio Diaz Diaz]

Hi NRK,

NRK wrote:
> I'm a bit a confused about the minilzip program included in lzlib, the
> manpage says it's a test program, but also says that it's compatible
> with lzip 1.4.

"compatible" in the sense that it is interoperable (it can decompress files 
produced by lzip, and vice versa), not in the sense of offering identical 
functionality. All the tools in the lzip family are compatible. See for 
example http://www.nongnu.org/lzip/plzip.html

> a) What exactly is "mini" about it?

Nothing really. I just adapted the name (minigzip) from the test program of 
zlib http://zlib.net/zlib_faq.html#faq06

> b) Is it intended to be used as a functional lzip(1) replacement or
> should it not be installed as such and only used for testing?

It is not intended to be installed because lzip has more features (like 
--list). But I test minilzip as thoroughly as I test lzip. AFAIK, minilzip 
is 100% reliable and you can use it as your main compressor if so you wish. 
See http://www.nongnu.org/lzip/manual/lzip_manual.html#Quality-assurance

"Three related but independent compressor implementations, lzip, clzip, and 
minilzip/lzlib, are developed concurrently. Every stable release of any of 
them is tested to check that it produces identical output to the other two. 
This guarantees that all three implement the same algorithm, and makes it 
unlikely that any of them may contain serious undiscovered errors."

> c) What's the "recommended" way to build the library but not build
> minilzip? I can currently do `make liblz.so.1.14` but that seems a bit
> odd.

Interesting question. There is not a recommended way. I Think I have not 
implemented a way to build the library without building minilzip because I 
never build lzlib without also testing it (and minilzip is required for 
'make check').

> Would you be willing to add something like `make lib` and/or `make
> static-lib` that builds the library only?

Sure. I guess it will need just 'make lib', which corresponds with 'make 
install-lib', because the kind of lib is selected with the configure options 
--disable-static and --enable-shared.

I can release a new version with 'make lib' maybe tomorrow.

> Thanks for writing and maintaining lzip.

You are welcome. :-)

Best regards,
Antonio.