Rewriting zlib in Phobos

[Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d]

On 5/7/16 3:33 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
 > Another library discussed as even more ripe for replacement is zlib:
 > * We compile the C source code, which is extra aggravation to the build scripts
 > * The D wrappers are ancient and clunky - we should have beautiful, efficient 
 > range streaming
 > * I think the license allows us to translate the source code to D, so we have 
 > a viable path of replacement
 > * Just got word (thx Rikki) the D wrappers use GC in a laissez-faire manner, 
 > so no way to use the library tightly
 >
 > So if anyone wants to look into this, it would be a good project.

Before anyone gets too deep into this, the zip file format is functionally the 
same as the various .lib and .a formats read and written by dmd, and there are 
many other such formats.

Any redesign should be a package based one, such as:

     std.archiver.zip
     std.archiver.libomf
     std.archiver.libmscoff
     std.archiver.libmach
     std.archiver.libelf

     (those are just the ones we have code for)

and they should use a common interface.