zip and unzip

Not sure if this should go to BLFS or this list, but I think it's a bit
off-topic for BLFS, so I'll post here.  I've been looking at the various
patches available from different operating systems for Info-Zip's zip and
unzip programs.  I've also been looking at different build scripts
including the build instructions on the BLFS site.  Both zip and unzip can
be built with or without bzip2 and zlib library support.  Adding bzip2
makes sense since it adds support for more formats.  I believe the BLFS
builds do end up bringing in the bzip2 library.  I'm wondering about the
zlib support though.  According to the code, it looks like it can use its
own functions and CRC tables or it could use some of zlib's functions and
CRC table.  Am wondering what the pros and cons would be to using zlib
functions over what's built into zip and unzip.  Also, noticed on one
mailing list that at least one distribution is using the beta versions of
zip and unzip (
https://sourceforge.net/projects/infozip/files/unreleased%20Betas/ ).
Don't know if they're any better or how stable they are, but there seem to
be a lot of fixes for Unicode support in them.

Does anyone else enjoy looking at the code they're building and trying to
apply the most useful patches and settings?  I find it very interesting
reading through the various patches and build settings and trying to figure
out what would be optimal on my system.  Unfortunately, I don't know of any
good places to discuss topics like that.  If there are better places to
discuss that sort of thing, please let me know.  Would be interesting to
know the logic behind what patches get put into a distribution and what
gets left out.  Some decisions are really evident.  However, with others,
it would be helpful to know the rationale behind the decisions.  I know
some distributions try to make as few changes to the upstream code as
possible.  That philosophy doesn't work well for me though.  Personally, I
tend to do the opposite and make as many changes as I need to get things
working the way I want.

If anyone has any experiences to share with building zip and unzip,
especially if they've looked into the various build settings and the
possibility of using zlib, I'd be very interested to hear about it.  Thanks.

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