BZIP2 for VMS - A File Compression/Expansion Utility

Excerpt from the BZIP2 Web Page

bzip2 is a freely available, patent free [(see README in the distribution kit)], high-quality data compressor. It typically compresses files to within 10% to 165% of the best available techniques (the PPM family of statistical compressors), whilst being around twice as fast at compression and six times faster at decompression.

BZIP2 Web Site

• https://sourceware.org/bzip2/ - bzip2 : Home

Caution for VMS Users

BZIP2 is a UNIX-oriented utility, and as such, it has little hope of dealing well with RMS files whose record format is anything other than Stream_LF.

For more versatile compressor-archiver programs with greater RMS capability, consider the Info-ZIP programs, Zip and UnZip.

• Source kits are available at: ftp://ftp.info-zip.org/pub/infozip/src/
• Pre-built VMS kits are available at: ftp://ftp.info-zip.org/pub/infozip/vms/
• A SourceForge Web page provides another path to Info-ZIP software.

Note that this bzip2 kit includes an object library which can be used to provide bzip2 compression in the Info-ZIP Zip and UnZip programs, and these programs can deal well with VMS/RMS file attributes. The Info-ZIP installation instructions explain how to build these programs with bzip2 compression support.

For another UNIX-oriented compression utility, see gzip.

BZIP2 1.0.8 VMS-Ready Kit

• VMS port notes (as included in the complete kit, below). This document describes the changes required to build BZIP2 version 1.0.8 on VMS.

  /ftp/bzip2/bzip2-1_0_8d_vms/vms_notes.txt

• Source-only kit (about 1MB), including:
  • Source (original and modified).

  /ftp/bzip2/bzip2-1_0_8d_vms/bzip2-1_0_8d_src.zip

• Complete kit (about 2MB), including:
  • Source (original and modified).
  • Alpha objects and executables (built on VMS V8.4-2L1 with VSI C V7.4-002).
  • IA64 objects and executable (built on VMS V8.4-2L3 with VSI C V7.4-001).
  • VAX objects and executables (built on VMS V7.3 with Compaq C V6.4-005).
  • x86_64 objects and executable (built on VMS x86_64 V9.2-1 with VSI C X7.4-785 (GEM 50X65)).

  Note that support for extended file names on ODS5 file systems depends on fairly recent C RTL features, as found in VMS V7.3-2 or VMS V7.3-1 with VMS731_ACRTL V3.0.

  /ftp/bzip2/bzip2-1_0_8d_vms/bzip2-1_0_8d_vms.zip

  The Zip archive for this kit was created using the Zip "-V" option to preserve the VMS file attributes, but the source files in this Zip archive should be usable on a non-VMS system.

BZIP2 for VMS Archive

All versions of BZIP2 for VMS, including older and experimental ones, may be found at the archive: /ftp/bzip2/

FTP access is also available at: ftp://ftp.antinode.info/bzip2/