XZ Utils for Windows ==================== Introduction ------------ This package includes command line tools (xz.exe and a few others) and the liblzma compression library from XZ Utils. You can find the latest version and full source code from <https://tukaani.org/xz/>. The parts of the XZ Utils source code, that are relevant to this binary package, are in the public domain. XZ Utils have been built for this package with MinGW-w64 and linked statically against its runtime libraries. See COPYING-Windows.txt for the copyright and license information that applies to the MinGW-w64 runtime. You must include it when redistributing these XZ Utils binaries. Package contents ---------------- All executables and libraries in this package require msvcrt.dll. It's included in all recent Windows versions. (On Windows 95 it might be missing, but once you get it somewhere, the i686 binaries should run even on Windows 95 if the processor is new enough.) There is a SSE2 optimization in the compression code but this version of XZ Utils doesn't include run-time processor detection. This is why there is a separate i686-SSE2 version. There is one directory for each type of executable and library files: bin_i686 32-bit x86 (i686 and newer), Windows 95 and later bin_i686-sse2 32-bit x86 (i686 with SSE2), Windows 98 and later bin_x86-64 64-bit x86-64, Windows Vista and later Each of the above directories have the following files: *.exe Command line tools. (It's useless to double-click these; use the command prompt instead.) These have been linked statically against liblzma, so they don't require liblzma.dll. Thus, you can copy e.g. xz.exe to a directory that is in PATH without copying any other files from this package. liblzma.dll Shared version of the liblzma compression library. This file is mostly useful to developers, although some non-developers might use it to upgrade their copy of liblzma. liblzma.a Static version of the liblzma compression library. This file is useful only for developers. The rest of the directories contain architecture-independent files: doc Documentation in the plain text (TXT) format. The manuals of the command line tools are provided also in the PDF format. liblzma.def is in this directory too. include C header files for liblzma. These should be compatible with most C and C++ compilers. If you have problems, try to fix it and send your fixes upstream, or at least report a bug, thanks. Linking against liblzma ----------------------- MinGW If you use MinGW, linking against liblzma.dll or liblzma.a should be straightforward. You don't need an import library to link against liblzma.dll, and for static linking, you don't need to worry about the LZMA_API_STATIC macro. Note that the MinGW distribution includes liblzma. If you are building packages that will be part of the MinGW distribution, you probably should use the version of liblzma shipped in MinGW instead of this package. Microsoft Visual C++ To link against liblzma.dll, you need to create an import library first. You need the "lib" command from MSVC and liblzma.def from the "doc" directory of this package. Here is the command that works on 32-bit x86: lib /def:liblzma.def /out:liblzma.lib /machine:ix86 On x86-64, the /machine argument has to naturally be changed: lib /def:liblzma.def /out:liblzma.lib /machine:x64 If you need to link statically against liblzma, you should build liblzma with MSVC 2013 update 2 or later. Alternatively, if having a decompressor is enough, consider using XZ Embedded or LZMA SDK. When you plan to link against static liblzma, you need to tell lzma.h to not use __declspec(dllimport) by defining the macro LZMA_API_STATIC. You can do it either in the C/C++ code #define LZMA_API_STATIC #include <lzma.h> or by adding it to compiler options. Other compilers If you are using some other compiler, see its documentation how to create an import library (if it is needed). If it is simple, I might consider including the instructions here. Reporting bugs -------------- Report bugs to <xz@tukaani.org>.