Hello,
As nobody responded to
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gzip/2009-08/msg00000.html, I am
sending this message again.
Vincent Lefevre (maintainer of the MPFR package) suggested that
utilities like zdiff, bzdiff, lzdiff, etc, should be provided
independently of compressors. So I have written a package named zutils
where I include such utilities with support for gzip, bzip2, lzip, xz
and uncompressed files. (Support for other compressors may be added later).
I am writing you because the most obvious names for such utilities are
the names of the utilities already distributed with gzip. I hope we can
cooperate to avoid name clashes in distributions. I think the best way
is gzip, bzip2 and lzip stop distributing their respective utilities and
distributions provide the zutils port/package to replace those utilities.
Alternatively, gzip utilities could be renamed to gzcat, gzdiff, etc.
The zutils package has been offered to GNU and is waiting approval, but
it seems coordination with the gzip maintainer is the main pending issue.
With zutils you can do:
zdiff file1.lz file2.gz
zdiff file1.bz2 file2
or
zgrep "string" file1 file2.lz file3.gz file4.bz2
Zutils homepage is http://www.nongnu.org/zutils/zutils.html
Best regards,
Antonio.
