[Lzip-bug] Lzip 1.18-rc1 released

[Antonio Diaz Diaz]

Lzip 1.18-rc1 is ready for testing here
http://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases/lzip/lzip-1.18-rc1.tar.lz
http://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases/lzip/lzip-1.18-rc1.tar.gz

The sha1sums are:
c7c16d6e155582ab3c90cf7b6bb68ea7ad999258  lzip-1.18-rc1.tar.lz
8cf154637006dc8efc5a06ac70607c9ad3e07c77  lzip-1.18-rc1.tar.gz

Please, test it and report any bugs you find.

Lzip is a lossless data compressor with a user interface similar to the 
one of gzip or bzip2. Lzip is about as fast as gzip, compresses most 
files more than bzip2, and is better than both from a data recovery 
perspective.

The lzip file format is designed for data sharing and long-term 
archiving, taking into account both data integrity and decoder availability:

  * The lzip format provides very safe integrity checking and some data
    recovery means. The lziprecover program can repair bit-flip errors
    (one of the most common forms of data corruption) in lzip files,
    and provides data recovery capabilities, including error-checked
    merging of damaged copies of a file.

  * The lzip format is as simple as possible (but not simpler). The
    lzip manual provides the code of a simple decompressor along with a
    detailed explanation of how it works, so that with the only help of
    the lzip manual it would be possible for a digital archaeologist to
    extract the data from a lzip file long after quantum computers
    eventually render LZMA obsolete.

  * Additionally the lzip reference implementation is copylefted, which
    guarantees that it will remain free forever.

The homepage is at http://www.nongnu.org/lzip/lzip.html


Changes in this version:

  * The test of the value remaining in the range decoder has been 
removed. (After extensive testing it has been found useless to detect 
corruption in the decompressed data. Eliminating it reduces the number 
of false positives for corruption and makes error detection more accurate).

  * Decompression support for version 0 files has been removed. (Nobody 
ever used them, not even myself).


Regards,
Antonio Diaz, lzip author and maintainer.