INSTALL

Overview
========

There are several methods for compiling and installing zlib-ng, depending
on your favorite operating system and development toolkits.
This document will attempt to give a general overview of some of them.

PS: We do not recommend running 'make install' unless you know what you
    are doing, as this can override the system default zlib library, and
    any wrong configuration or incompatability of zlib-ng can make the
    whole system unusable.

On linux distros, an alternative way to use zlib-ng instead of zlib
for specific programs exist, use LD_PRELOAD.
If the program is dynamically linked with zlib, then zlib-ng can take
its place without risking system-wide instability. Ex:
LD_PRELOAD=/opt/zlib-ng/libz.so.1.2.11.zlib-ng /usr/bin/program


Configure
=========

Using the configure script is currently the main method of setting up the
makefiles and preparing for compilation. Configure will attempt to detect
the specifics of your system, and enable some of the relevant options for you.

Configure accepts several command-line options, some of the most important
ones are detailed below.

--zlib-compat
 This enables options that will ensure that zlib-ng is compiled with all the
 functions that a standard zlib library contains, you will need to use this
 if you are going to be using zlib-ng as a drop-in replacement for zlib.

--without-optimizations
 This will disable zlib-ng specific optimizations (does not disable strategies).

--without-new-strategies
 This will disable specially optimized strategies, such as deflate_quick and
 deflate_medium.

Run configure like this:
./configure --zlib-compat

Then you can compile using make:
make
make test


Cmake
=====

Cmake is an alternative to configure, basically letting you do the same thing,
but with different tools and user interfaces.

Start by initializing cmake:
cmake .

Then you can start the configuration tui to set the wanted options
ccmake .

You can now compile using make:
make
make test