This is the file README for the gzip distribution, version 1.0.7.
gzip (GNU zip) is a compression utility designed to be a replacement
for 'compress'. Its main advantages over compress are much better
compression and freedom from patented algorithms. The GNU Project
uses it as the standard compression program for its system.
gzip currently uses by default the LZ77 algorithm used in zip 1.9 (the
portable pkzip compatible archiver). The gzip format was however
designed to accommodate several compression algorithms.
gunzip can currently decompress files created by gzip, zip (with
restrictions), compress or pack. (The SCO 'compress -H' format will be
supported in a future version.) The detection of the input format is
automatic. When using the first two formats, gunzip checks a 32 bit
CRC. For pack, gunzip checks the uncompressed length. The 'compress'
format was not designed to allow consistency checks. However gunzip is
sometimes able to detect a bad .Z file because there is some
redundancy in the .Z compression format. If you get an error when
uncompressing a .Z file, do not assume that the .Z file is correct
simply because the standard uncompress does not complain. This
generally means that the standard uncompress does not check its input,
and happily generates garbage output.
gzip produces files with a .z extension. This was chosen to mimic the
'compress' .Z extension. Using exactly the same extension would have
caused too much confusion. Using a completely different extension
would have forced changes in other programs such as GNU tar (which has
a -z option). The .z extension is already used by the 'pack'
Huffman encoder, but gunzip is able to decompress packed files.
Several planned features are not yet supported (see the file TODO).
See the file INSTALL for installation instructions. See the file NEWS
for a summary of changes since 0.5.
WARNINGS about broken optimizers:
- on the NeXT, "cc -finline-functions" is broken. gzip produces
valid .z files but they are much too large because the string
matching code misses most matches. Use "cc -O" instead.
- on the Mips R4000, gcc -O (version 2.3.1) generates bad code, use cc
or just gcc -g instead.
- gcc 2.3.3 on the SGI Indigo IRIX 4.0.5 also produces bad code. Use
instead: make CC='cc -O2'
- on SparcStation with SunOS 4.1.1 and the SC1.0 compiler, the optimizer
works up to -O3 but -O4 does not work.
- MSC 5.1 with -Ox and -DDYN_ALLOC generates bad code in inflate.c.
The default is static allocation (no DYN_ALLOC) and -Ox works on inflate.c.
But -Ox does not work on util.c, so you must use -Oait -Gs.
For all machines, Use "make check" to check that gzip was compiled correctly.
Please send all comments and bug reports by electronic mail to:
Jean-loup Gailly <jloup@chorus.fr>
or, if this fails, to bug-gnu-utils@prep.ai.mit.edu.
Bug reports should ideally include:
* The complete output of "gzip -V" (or the contents of revision.h
if you can't get gzip to compile)
* The hardware and operating system
* The compiler used to compile
* A description of the bug behavior
* The input to gzip, that triggered the bug
The package crypt++.el is highly recommended to manipulate gzip'ed
file from emacs. It recognizes automatically encrypted and compressed
files when they are first visited or written. It is available via
anonymous ftp to roebling.poly.edu [128.238.5.31] in /pub/crypt++.el.
The same directory contains also patches to dired, ange-ftp, info and
tar. A patch for tar 1.11.1 is included in the gzip distribution
because too many people independently reinvent it (see gzip-tar.patch).
The znew and gzexe shell scripts provided with gzip benefit from
(but do not require) the cpmod utility to transfer file attributes.
It is available by anonymous ftp on gatekeeper.dec.com in
/.0/usenet/comp.sources.unix/volume11/cpmod.Z.
gzip is free software, you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
the terms of the GNU General Public License, a copy of which is
provided under the name COPYING. The latest version of the gzip
sources can always be found in prep.ai.mit.edu:/pub/gnu/gzip-*.tar*
or any of the prep mirror sites. An MSDOS lha self-extracting exe is in
gzip-msdos-*.exe. The Soloaris 2 executables are in gzip-solaris-*.tar.
A VMS executable is available in ftp.spc.edu:[.macro32.savesets]gzip-1-*.zip
(use [.macro32]unzip.exe to extract).
Many thanks to those who provided me with bug reports and feedback.
See the files THANKS and ChangeLog for more details.
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