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Download Formats

The Boost libraries are distributed as a compressed archive in either ZIP, TAR.GZ, or TAR.BZ2 format. Below are hints which programs you can use to unpack the archive.

.zip file

The .zip format is widely supported by both free decoders and commercial compress/archive utilities. If you don't already have a .zip file decoder, download one from the Info-ZIP web site, which supplies versions for many operating systems.

Text file line endings in the .zip file are as supplied by each library developer.  This works fine for Windows, but not for Unix/Linux.  The .tar.gz and .tar.bz2 files supply Unix/Linux friendly line endings.

.tar.gz and .tar.bz2 files

The .tar.gz format is widely supported on Unix/Linux platforms. Some Windows compress/archive utilities can read the format as well.  Because the gzip format compresses the archive as a single file rather than compressing each file individually, the .tar.gz file is smaller that the .zip file.

The .tar.bz2 format is becoming widely available on Unix/Linux platforms and is built into many tar utilities. This format differs for the .tar.gz format in the compression used, which is considerably better and therefore creates smaller files.

Text file line endings in the .tar.gz and .tar.bz2 files have been converted to newlines for ease of use on Unix/Linux platforms.

Revised 8 November, 2004

Copyright © Rene Rivera 2003.
Copyright © Jens Maurer 2001.
Copyright © John Maddock 2004.

Distributed under the Boost Software License, Version 1.0. (See accompanying file LICENSE_1_0.txt or copy at www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt)