aboutsummaryrefslogtreecommitdiffstats
path: root/contrib/libs/libbz2/README
blob: e0b6d4d3de8f0805420c203f08ecc3c8ae85f47e (plain) (blame)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
 
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)