Re: Compression libraries such as zlib and zstd ought to be first class boost libraries

From: Christian Mazakas (christian.mazakas_at_[hidden])
Date: 2024-05-02 23:01:36

> I think Christian meant adding a compression abstraction library above
> zlib, bz2, zip, etc?

I actually really meant this lol.

I will say, I too even struggled getting b2 to pick up zlib on my system
but that's not
something that's impossible to solve. You just log into slack and complain
in #boost
until Peter solves your build problems for you.

It's 2024 and the best solution we have for adding compression to a user's
application
is: "just learn zlib" or other similar C-like APIs.

I didn't have anything particularly concrete in mind. I was just vocalizing
my feelings.

> That's even worse, as we would be throwing away twenty five years of
> optimizations in the decompressor, much of which is written in assembly
> language for various architectures. Is he proposing we rewrite all of
that?
> This is not a sound engineering practice to me.

Well, get prepared to have your mind blown!

https://github.com/zlib-ng/zlib-ng

Seems like someone already beat us to the punch and went ahead and
re-implemented
all of zlib for some decent gains, it seems.

- Christian