Installing Gzip-1.3.5

The Gzip package contains programs for compressing and decompressing files.

Approximate build time:  0.1 SBU
Required disk space:     2.6 MB

Official download location for Gzip (1.3.5): 
ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gzip/

For its installation Gzip depends on: Bash, Binutils, Coreutils, Diffutils, GCC, Glibc, Grep, Make, Sed.

Installation of Gzip

Prepare Gzip for compilation:

./configure --prefix=/usr

The gzexe script has the location of the gzip binary hard-wired into it. Because we later change the location of the binary, the following command assures that the new location gets placed into the script:

cp gzexe.in{,.backup}
sed 's%"BINDIR"%/bin%' gzexe.in.backup > gzexe.in

Compile the package:

make

Install the package:

make install

And move the programs to the /bin directory:

mv /usr/bin/gzip /bin
rm /usr/bin/{gunzip,zcat}
ln -s gzip /bin/gunzip
ln -s gzip /bin/zcat
ln -s gunzip /bin/uncompress

Contents of Gzip

Installed programs: gunzip (link to gzip), gzexe, gzip, uncompress (link to gunzip), zcat (link to gzip), zcmp, zdiff, zegrep, zfgrep, zforce, zgrep, zless, zmore and znew

Short descriptions

gunzip decompresses gzipped files.

gzexe is used to create self-uncompressing executable files.

gzip compresses the given files, using Lempel-Ziv (LZ77) coding.

zcat uncompresses the given gzipped files to standard output.

zcmp runs cmp on gzipped files.

zdiff runs diff on gzipped files.

zegrep runs egrep on gzipped files.

zfgrep runs fgrep on gzipped files.

zforce forces a .gz extension on all given files that are gzipped files, so that gzip will not compress them again. This can be useful when file names were truncated during a file transfer.

zgrep runs grep on gzipped files.

zless runs less on gzipped files.

zmore runs more on gzipped files.

znew recompresses files from compress format to gzip format -- .Z to .gz.