Gzip for VMS - A File Compression/Expansion Utility

Excerpt from the gzip Web Page

gzip (GNU zip) is a compression utility designed to be a replacement for compress. Its main advantages over compress are much better compression and freedom from patented algorithms. It has been adopted by the GNU project and is now relatively popular on the Internet.

Gzip Web Sites

• http://www.gzip.org/ - The gzip home page
• http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gzip/ - Source kits

Caution for VMS Users

Gzip is a UNIX-oriented utility, and as such, it has little hope of dealing well with RMS files whose record format is anything exotic. It is able to deal with most common text file formats, at the cost of not determining a size (in bytes) or calculating a CRC checksum for any files.

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.

For another UNIX-oriented compression utility, see bzip2.

Gzip 1.8 VMS-Ready Kits

Note: Gzip versions since 1.4 have been modernized (GNU-ized) to a point where they can not be built easily on older VMS systems (pre-V7.0?). The version 1.3.12 kit (below) is more likely to work on older systems. Kits for other, intermediate versions should be available in the archive.

• VMS port notes (as included in the source-only and complete kits, below). This document describes the changes required to build gzip version 1.8 on VMS.

  /ftp/gzip/gzip-1_8a_vms/vms_notes.txt

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

  /ftp/gzip/gzip-1_8a_vms/gzip-1_8a_src.zip

• Complete kit, including:
  • Source (original and modified).
  • Alpha objects and executable (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 executable (built on VMS V7.3 with Compaq C V6.4-005).
  • x86_64 objects and executable (built on VMS V8.4-2L3 with VSI C X7.4-547 (GEM 50V6F)).

  /ftp/gzip/gzip-1_8a_vms/gzip-1_8a_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.

Gzip 1.3.12 VMS-Ready Kits

• VMS port notes (as included in the source-only and complete kits, below). This document describes the changes required to build gzip version 1.3.12 on VMS.

  /ftp/gzip/gzip-1_3_12e_vms/vms_notes.txt

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

  /ftp/gzip/gzip-1_3_12e_vms/gzip-1_3_12e_src.zip

• Complete kit, including:
  • Source (original and modified).
  • Alpha objects and executable (built on VMS V8.3 with HP C V7.3-009).
  • IA64 objects and executable (built on VMS V8.3-1H1 with HP C V7.3-019).
  • VAX objects and executable (built on VMS V7.3 with Compaq C V6.4-005).

  /ftp/gzip/gzip-1_3_12e_vms/gzip-1_3_12e_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.

Gzip for VMS Archive

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

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