Re: [boost] Any interrest for zip/bzip2 iostreams ?

From: Jeff Garland (jeff_at_[hidden])
Date: 2003-10-06 08:36:25

On Mon, 06 Oct 2003 09:35:06 +0200, Jonathan de Halleux wrote
> Thank you for your positive answers about the zipped streams. Here's 
> a summary of the suggestions I received:
> 
>    1 - yes, zipped streams could be useful in boost,
> 
>    2 - "is it appropriate for a boost library to require another 
> library 
> (excluding the standard library) to use" (Jeff Garland). ¨ Personaly,
>  I think it is not a problem. zlib or bzip2 are already used in a 
> looooot of applications with problem. Of course, boost people should 
> give their oppinion on this,

I tracked down the discussion in the archive from Feb 2001.  I believe it led
to some changes in the policies page on the subject of library reuse.  Since
then a whole page has been written.

http://www.boost.org/more/library_reuse.htm
http://lists.boost.org/MailArchives/boost/msg08879.php
http://lists.boost.org/MailArchives/boost/msg08833.php

Conclusion it should be ok. 

>    3 -  A third suggestion was asking for user defined compression 
> support 
> (Ehsan Akhgari, Pavel Vozenilek ): basically, the wrapper is not 
> designed for that right now. There are a few reasons for that, that 
> could be discussed further:        The zlib and bzip2 libraries have 
> some intrisic differences: their constructor arguments, the number 
> of configuration parameters, zlib can add a header, bzip2 not, 
> etc... All these differences would make a common wrapper quite 
> difficult to make. Anyway, all suggestions are welcome.

In my wrapper stream class I adapt and expose some of the underlying API
options -- you could do something similar.

Jeff