Re: Any Interest in a port of ZLib to C++?

From: Andrey Semashev (andrey.semashev_at_[hidden])
Date: 2021-03-23 10:53:07

On 3/23/21 8:14 AM, Vinnie Falco via Boost wrote:
> Beast currently has its own port of ZLib to C++:
> 
> <https://github.com/boostorg/beast/tree/develop/include/boost/beast/zlib>
> 
> Is there any interest in having this proposed as its own separate
> Boost library (with a separate review, which has nothing to do with
> Beast)? The differences would be as follows:
> 
> * Ported to use C++11 idioms
> * Same header-only / compiled source model as Boost.JSON
> * Better documentation and clear API
> * Improved tests
> 
> Programs which use this C++ port of ZLib would get their zlib
> dependency from Boost instead of the official zlib distribution. And
> they can integrate it into their projects the same way that Boost
> libraries are integrated. Or they can include <boost/zlib/src.hpp> in
> any one translation unit (like JSON).
> 
> The motivation for this is twofold:
> 
> * Provide an easier way for users to access ZLib's functionality
> * To use this in some new libraries that I'm going to propose

I would most probably *not* use it and rely on zlib or zlib-ng because 
(a) it would probably be used by other libraries that are not part of 
your ecosystem, (b) because its maintenance would be a someone else's 
burden (e.g. a distro maintainer's) and not mine, and (c), especially in 
zlib-ng case, I suspect it would be better optimized than your 
header-only version.

Because of this I'd like to ask you to at least provide an option to 
build your present and future libraries against zlib.