Bzip2-1.0.2

The Bzip2 package contains programs for compressing and decompressing files. On text files they achieve a much better compression than the traditional gzip.

Approximate build time:  0.1 SBU
Required disk space:     3.0 MB

Bzip2 installation depends on: Bash, Binutils, Coreutils, Diffutils, GCC, Glibc, Make.

Installation of Bzip2

Prepare Bzip2 for compilation with:

make -f Makefile-libbz2_so
make clean

The -f flag will cause Bzip2 to be built using a different Makefile file, in this case the Makefile-libbz2_so file, which creates a dynamic libbz2.so library and links the Bzip2 utilities against it.

Compile the package:

make

If you are reinstalling Bzip2, you need to do rm -f /usr/bin/bz* first, otherwise the following make install will fail.

Install the programs:

make install

Now install the shared bzip2 binary into the /bin directory, then make some necessary symbolic links, and clean up:

cp bzip2-shared /bin/bzip2
cp -a libbz2.so* /lib
ln -s ../../lib/libbz2.so.1.0 /usr/lib/libbz2.so
rm /usr/bin/{bunzip2,bzcat,bzip2}
mv /usr/bin/{bzip2recover,bzless,bzmore} /bin
ln -s bzip2 /bin/bunzip2
ln -s bzip2 /bin/bzcat

Contents of Bzip2

Installed programs: bunzip2 (link to bzip2), bzcat (link to bzip2), bzcmp, bzdiff, bzegrep, bzfgrep, bzgrep, bzip2, bzip2recover, bzless and bzmore

Installed libraries: libbz2.a, libbz2.so (link to libbz2.so.1.0), libbz2.so.1.0 (link to libbz2.so.1.0.2) and libbz2.so.1.0.2

Short descriptions

bunzip2 decompresses bzipped files.

bzcat decompresses to standard output.

bzcmp runs cmp on bzipped files.

bzdiff runs diff on bzipped files.

bzgrep and friends run grep on bzipped files.

bzip2 compresses files using the Burrows-Wheeler block sorting text compression algorithm with Huffman coding. The compression rate is generally considerably better than that achieved by more conventional compressors using LZ77/LZ78, like gzip.

bzip2recover tries to recover data from damaged bzip2 files.

bzless runs less on bzipped files.

bzmore runs more on bzipped files.

libbz2* is the library implementing lossless, block-sorting data compression, using the Burrows-Wheeler algorithm.