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madler / zlib

A massively spiffy yet delicately unobtrusive compression library.
http://zlib.net/
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gzip specifications regarding OS code #235

Closed hadrien-psydk closed 7 years ago

hadrien-psydk commented 7 years ago

Since zlib 1.2.11 the OS_CODE for Windows stored in the gzip header has a value of 10, as specified by PkZip APPNOTE.TXT file.

The value for Windows used to be 11, as specified by RFC 1952. This is a bit confusing. For example, when I compress a gzip archive with zlib 1.2.11 and open it with an archiver tool (like 7-zip), I get "TOPS-20" as the OS.

Is there any plan to update the RFC (or release a new official document) in order to update the operating system code mapping? That way any program that would implement gzip would use the new values instead of the old ones.

madler commented 7 years ago

I have no plan to submit a new RFC. (You can't really update an RFC. As I understand it, you can only put out a new one with a new number that states that it supersedes the old one.)

This is not a real issue as the OS code doesn't affect anything except for the programs listing the contents.

alessandrodn commented 7 years ago

Even though I may agree that the OS byte doesn't affect the program functionality, I wonder why zlib should comply with PKware definition and not respect the RFC 1952 standard?