Re: zip and unzip

On Fri, Dec 13, 2019 at 08:43:31PM -0700, Flareon Zulu wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 13, 2019 at 6:10 AM LM <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> > 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.

Only since earlier this month :)  It was perhaps linked in a long time ago (I
don't have any backups old enough to look at), but for some years it was
ignored.  The only reason I fixed it for ticket #12840 was because a
perl module got a test which failed.

> >  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.
> >

I didn't know of that link, but from looking at fedora (who I guess
have a bigger base of users who might test some of these things) I
saw that some fixes were from upstream, but more recent security
fixes were not.  My impression is that although upstream had
intended to reduce one last newer version, in the end they gave up.

> > 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.
> >

For BLFS, and indeed any flavour of 'nix, I will be surprised if
many people use zip files for general purposes.  I only use them as
source if that is all that I can find (quite common for fonts, used
for some libreoffice and mozilla items).

Accordingly, I have little use for zip, and for unzip all I require
is that it can handle all the files I need it to extract.  I've no
idea what forms of compression might be used in those files.

> 
> This definitely goes with BLFS, as the main book doesn't worry about
> building zip, unzip, or expand on patches past the required. Otherwise, I
> find that I'd rather patch for security instead of patching for extra
> features.
> 
> Flareon Zulu

It would certainly be on-topic for BLFS-support, but might not get
any answers.  Like Flareon I'm much more interested in patching for
security (or for build problems with current toolchains).

ĸen
-- 
          We've all got both light and dark inside of us.
          What matters is the part we choose to act on.
                                              -- Sirius Black
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