zlib-ng-2.0.6 (wait for decision)

[Xi Ruoyao]

zlib-ng (​https://github.com/zlib-ng/zlib-ng) is a zlib replacement with optimizations for modern systems. It can be built & installed as a zlib drop-in replacement with

./configure --prefix=/usr --zlib-compat
make
make install
rm -v /usr/lib/libz.a

I've installed it (overwriting zlib) on my BLFS system and no regression is observed so far.

[Tim Tassonis]

At first, I thought this is yet another unneeded fork for dubious reasons, but after reading the docu, it seems this a non-hostile fork motivated by merging of new optimisation and code clean-up due to dropping very old platforms and compilers.

So, I think I will give this a try as well.

[Berzerkula]

Researching this author's work, they fork a lot of projects. Keep watch on this work. Shouldn't be taken lightly.

[Bruce Dubbs]

The current zlib seems pretty solid. We really don't use it much any more as xz seems to be the most used compression system today. Unless a security issue comes up in zlib, I don't think it is broken and there is little benefit in changing.

[Berzerkula]

If it does provide some significant improvement in performance, I have a system with built with both Gnome and KDE/Plasma with most if not all dependencies (many not in book, too) and I have about 754 binaries and libraries linked to zlib. So if we do update to zlib-ng, it will affect many packages which link to zlib.

[Xi Ruoyao]

It seems Fedora is making the move. If another major distro follows I'll reopen and do it.