Question 1

How do I integrate miniz into my C project?

Accepted Answer

Download the miniz.c and miniz.h files from the releases page and add them directly to your project. No external dependencies are needed, making it straightforward for various build systems like CMake or Meson.

Question 2

Miniz vs zlib: which should I use?

Accepted Answer

Choose Miniz for MIT licensing, single-file simplicity, or built-in PNG/ZIP utilities. Opt for zlib if you need full API coverage, encryption support, or more extensive documentation and community resources.

Question 3

Does miniz support multi-threading?

Accepted Answer

Miniz is optimized for single-threaded performance and does not natively support multi-threaded compression. For parallel processing, you may need to implement threading at the application level or consider other libraries.

Question 4

How to compress a stream with miniz?

Accepted Answer

Use the low-level tdefl compressor with its state struct, allowing incremental calls for stream processing. The coroutine-style implementation supports feeding data byte by byte, as described in the features.

Question 5

What's the compression performance of miniz compared to fastlz?

Accepted Answer

At level 1, miniz compresses 5-9% better than minilzo but is about 35% slower, as noted in the README. For higher levels, it compares favorably to zlib in both speed and ratio.

Question 6

Can miniz handle large files efficiently?

Accepted Answer

Yes, miniz supports stream-based processing, so it can handle large files by compressing or decompressing in chunks without loading everything into memory, making it suitable for resource-constrained systems.

Miniz

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