GNU gzip - News: gzip-1.7 released [stable]

gzip-1.7 released [stable]

Item posted by Jim Meyering <meyering> on Mon 28 Mar 2016 04:27:07 AM UTC.

This is to announce gzip-1.7, a stable release.

There have been 60 commits by 4 people in the nearly three
years since 1.6.

See the NEWS below for a brief summary.

Thanks to everyone who has contributed!
The following people contributed changes to this release:

  Jason Leschnik (1)
  Jim Meyering (23)
  Paul Eggert (35)
  Rusty Russell (1)

Jim [on behalf of the gzip maintainers]
============================================================

Here is the GNU gzip home page:
    http://gnu.org/s/gzip/

For a summary of changes and contributors, see:
  http://git.sv.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=gzip.git;a=shortlog;h=v1.7
or run this command from a git-cloned gzip directory:
  git shortlog v1.6..v1.7

To summarize the 838 gnulib-related changes, run these commands
from a git-cloned gzip directory:
  git checkout v1.7
  git submodule summary v1.6

Here are the compressed sources:
  http://ftp.gnu.org/gzip/gzip-1.7.tar.gz   (1.2MB)
  http://ftp.gnu.org/gzip/gzip-1.7.tar.xz   (748KB)

Here are the GPG detached signatures[*]:
  http://ftp.gnu.org/gzip/gzip-1.7.tar.gz.sig
  http://ftp.gnu.org/gzip/gzip-1.7.tar.xz.sig

Use a mirror for higher download bandwidth:
  http://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html

[*] Use a .sig file to verify that the corresponding file (without the
.sig suffix) is intact.  First, be sure to download both the .sig file
and the corresponding tarball.  Then, run a command like this:

  gpg --verify gzip-1.7.tar.gz.sig

If that command fails because you don't have the required public key,
then run this command to import it:

  gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv-keys 7FD9FCCB000BEEEE

and rerun the 'gpg --verify' command.

This release was bootstrapped with the following tools:
  Autoconf 2.69.147-5ad35
  Automake 1.99a
  Gnulib v0.1-726-gf58b173

============================================================
NEWS

* Noteworthy changes in release 1.7 (2016-03-27) [stable]

** Changes in behavior

  The GZIP environment variable is now obsolescent; gzip now warns if
  it is used, and rejects attempts to use dangerous options or operands.
  You can use an alias or script instead.

  Installed programs like 'zgrep' now use the PATH environment variable
  as usual to find subsidiary programs like 'gzip' and 'grep'.
  Previously they prepended the installation directory to the PATH,
  which sometimes caused 'make check' to test the wrong gzip executable.
  [bug introduced in gzip-1.3.13]

** New features

  gzip now accepts the --synchronous option, which causes it to use
  fsync and similar primitives to transfer output data to the output
  file's storage device when the file system supports this.  Although
  this option makes gzip safer in the presence of system crashes, it
  can make gzip considerably slower.

  gzip now accepts the --rsyncable option. This option is accepted in
  all modes, but has effect only when compressing: it makes the resulting
  output more amenable to efficient use of rsync.  For example, when a
  large input file gets a small change, a gzip --rsyncable image of
  that file will remain largely unchanged, too.  Without --rsyncable,
  even a tiny change in the input could result in a totally different
  gzip-compressed output file.

** Bug fixes

  gzip -k -v no longer reports that files are replaced.
  [bug present since the beginning]

  zgrep -f A B C no longer reads A more than once if A is not a regular file.
  This better supports invocations like 'zgrep -f <(COMMAND) B C' in Bash.
  [bug introduced in gzip-1.2]