From: hansr Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2014 08:49:38 +0000 (+0200) Subject: Smaller readme changes and additions X-Git-Tag: 1.9.9-b1~913 X-Git-Url: http://git.ipfire.org/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?a=commitdiff_plain;h=2d3d8b649c1bc63765f1c125cee255099d3ee35d;p=thirdparty%2Fzlib-ng.git Smaller readme changes and additions --- diff --git a/README b/README index c41e8de18..7c32c936a 100644 --- a/README +++ b/README @@ -1,5 +1,8 @@ zlib-ng - zlib for the next generation systems +Maintained by Hans Kristian Rosbach + aka Dead2 (zlib-ng àt circlestorm dót org) + Fork Motivation and History --------------------------- @@ -8,23 +11,28 @@ The motivation for this fork was due to seeing several 3rd party contributions containing new optimizations not getting implemented into the official zlib repository. +Mark Adler has been maintaining zlib for a very long time, and he has +done a great job and hopefully he will continue for a long time yet. +The idea of zlib-ng is not to replace zlib, but to co-exist as a +drop-in replacement with a lower threshold for code change. + zlib has a long history and is incredibly portable, even supporting lots of systems that predate the Internet. This is great, but it does complicate further development and maintainability. The zlib code has to make numerous workarounds for old compilers that -do not understand ANSI-C or to accomodate systems with limitations -such as 16-bit msdos. +do not understand ANSI-C or to accommodate systems with limitations +such as operating in a 16-bit environment. Many of these workarounds are only maintenance burdens, some of them are pretty huge code-wise. For example, the [v]s[n]printf workaround code has a whopping 8 different implementations just to cater to -various old compilers. - -Mark Adler has been maintaining zlib for a very long time, and he has -done a great job and hopefully he will continue for a long time yet. +various old compilers. With this many workarounds cluttered throughout +the code, new programmers with an idea/interest for zlib will need +to take some time to figure out why all of these seemingly strange +things are used, and how to work within those confines. So I decided to make a fork, merge all the Intel optimizations, merge -the cloudlfare optimizations that did not conflict, plus a couple +the Cloudflare optimizations that did not conflict, plus a couple of other smaller patches. Then I started cleaning out workarounds, various dead code, all contrib and example code as there is little point in having those in this fork for different reasons. @@ -35,14 +43,18 @@ cluttering up the main code too much. Now, there is still a lot to do and I am sure there are better ways of doing several of the changes I have done. And I would be delighted -to receive patches either by email or preferrably as pull requests on -github. Just remember that any code you submit must be your own and -it must be zlib licenced. (Please read the full license below, it is -really very simple and very liberal.) +to receive patches, preferably as pull requests on github. +Just remember that any code you submit must be your own and it must +be zlib licensed. (Please read the full license below, it is really +very simple and very liberal.) Acknowledgments ---------------- +---------------- + +Big thanks to Driv Digital AS / raskesider.no for sponsoring my +maintainership of zlib-ng. + The deflate format used by zlib was defined by Phil Katz. The deflate and zlib specifications were written by L. Peter Deutsch.