Hi, version 1.2 removed the zutils binary. I want to plead for its re-inclusion for the next zutils release.
Many distributions supply a gzip package which supplies the same binaries that zutils provides (zcat, zcmp, zdiff...) though of course limited to extracting gzip. So when one installs zutils, these binaries are replaced by the ones from zutils. Though nothing prevents a system admin to change /bin/zcat back to the version provided by the gzip package without uninstalling zutils. This poses a problem for packages that want to depend on the additional functionality provided by the zutils version of the tools. They can no longer depend on zutils being installed if they want to rely on /bin/zcat providing transparent decompression of more than gzip. This means that software that wants to use the zutils version of /bin/zcat needs to check whether /bin/zcat comes from gzip or zutils at runtime. If they find out it comes from gzip, then it is not possible for them to fall back to an alternative binary. One way to solve this problem would be if zutils would reintroduce the zutils binary which was removed in the 1.2 release. Then software which wants to use the zutils version of zcat could just run "zutils --zcat" and would not need any additional checks. I think because of this problem, the zutils binary was very useful and I would wholeheartedly welcome if it was reintroduced. What do you think? Please keep me CC-ed as I'm not subscribed. cheers, josch _______________________________________________ Zutils-bug mailing list Zutils-bug@nongnu.org https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/zutils-bug