| 1 | |
| 2 | Frequently Asked Questions about zlib |
| 3 | |
| 4 | |
| 5 | If your question is not there, please check the zlib home page |
| 6 | http://www.cdrom.com/pub/infozip/zlib/ which may have more recent information. |
| 7 | |
| 8 | |
| 9 | 1) I need a Windows DLL |
| 10 | 2) I need a Visual Basic interface to zlib |
| 11 | 3) compress() returns Z_BUF_ERROR |
| 12 | 4) deflate or inflate returns Z_BUF_ERROR |
| 13 | 5) Where is the zlib documentation (man pages, etc...)? |
| 14 | 6) Why don't you use GNU autoconf, libtool, etc...? |
| 15 | 7) There is a bug in zlib. |
| 16 | 8) I get "undefined reference to gzputc" |
| 17 | |
| 18 | |
| 19 | |
| 20 | 1) I need a Windows DLL |
| 21 | |
| 22 | The zlib sources can be compiled without change to produce a DLL. |
| 23 | If you want a precompiled DLL, see http://www.winimage.com/zLibDll |
| 24 | |
| 25 | |
| 26 | 2) I need a Visual Basic interface to zlib |
| 27 | |
| 28 | See http://www.tcfb.com/dowseware/cmp-z-it.zip |
| 29 | http://web2.airmail.net/markn/articles/zlibtool/zlibtool.htm |
| 30 | and contrib/visual-basic.txt |
| 31 | |
| 32 | 3) compress() returns Z_BUF_ERROR |
| 33 | |
| 34 | Make sure that before the call of compress, the length of the |
| 35 | compressed buffer is equal to the total size of the compressed buffer |
| 36 | and not zero. For Visual Basic, check that this parameter is passed |
| 37 | by reference ("as any"), not by value ("as long"). |
| 38 | |
| 39 | |
| 40 | 4) deflate or inflate returns Z_BUF_ERROR |
| 41 | |
| 42 | Make sure that before the call avail_in and avail_out are not zero. |
| 43 | |
| 44 | |
| 45 | 5) Where is the zlib documentation (man pages, etc...)? |
| 46 | |
| 47 | It's in zlib.h for the moment. Volunteers to transform this |
| 48 | to man pages, please contact jloup@gzip.org. Examples of zlib usage |
| 49 | are in the files example.c and minigzip.c. |
| 50 | |
| 51 | |
| 52 | 6) Why don't you use GNU autoconf, libtool, etc...? |
| 53 | |
| 54 | Because we would like to keep zlib as a very small and simple package. |
| 55 | zlib is rather portable and doesn't need much configuration. |
| 56 | |
| 57 | |
| 58 | 7) There is a bug in zlib. |
| 59 | |
| 60 | Most of the time, such problems are due to an incorrect usage |
| 61 | of zlib. Please try to reproduce the problem with a small |
| 62 | program and send us the corresponding source at zlib@quest.jpl.nasa.gov |
| 63 | Do not send multi-megabyte data files without prior agreement. |
| 64 | |
| 65 | |
| 66 | 8) I get "undefined reference to gzputc" |
| 67 | |
| 68 | If "make test" produces something like |
| 69 | example.o(.text+0x174): |
| 70 | check that you don't have old files libz.* in /usr/lib, /usr/local/lib |
| 71 | or /usr/X11R6/lib. Remove old versions then do "make install". |
| 72 | |