Hi,

I tried to compile gzip with visual studio 2015. Unfortunately, a few files could not be ported. Microsoft has redesigned the core CRT which affects the visibility of (hidden/internals) of e.g. the FILE type. None of the internals of the FILE type is not visible anymore (contrary to Visual Studio 2013 and before). This affects e.g. freadingc, fpurge.c, fseeko.c, fseterr.c.

If something else than gcc/glibc is used, then each change - up to everything that the OS/libc/compiler vendor found as useful - may break gzip. Is it not bad programming practice to do so?

My questions are:

1. why does gzip use and rely on these internals?

2. Is it intended that gzip should NOT compile on anything else where gcc/glibc is not used?

Background information: we are normally just compile gzip to be sure that gzip uses the same bits (64-bit) and same C/C++ runtime (DLLs) as used by all our binaries. By using the same compiler, end-users only need to install one runtime (using vcredistxxx.exe that is shipped with Visual Studio). Moving to something else (e.g. pre-compiled gzip) will break this. Also, there is no recent gzip version available using Visual Studio runtime DLLs.

Please let me know your thoughts,

Regards,

Kees Dekker