Question

I am looking for a (prefferably small) open source library in C or C++ which I can include in my MIT licensed projects (hosted on google code). I am a hobby C/C++ programmist so I am not that advanced, however I know just the things I need to develop plugins for a application named “SA-MP” (works on Windows and Linux).
What I am willing to make is an auto installer which will need to be able to uncompress compressed files (prefferably .zip, but any other file compression method will do!).

I have looked for such a library but they always need to have some extra dll’s on windows or some other files on linux – which is not the thing I am looking for as the end-users may not be able to know how to install the plugin with it’s required components.

Looked also at Basic Compression Library and it seems it doesn’t have file compression, but just algorithms. So with that one I’m out of luck.

To make the above text short:

• No external depencies, extra libraries which are needed are allowed if they can be linked to my C/C++ project.
• Can compress whole directories and unpack them.
• Works on windows and linux.
• Can be safely used with MIT license (optional, preffered)

Answer 1

What’s wrong with zlib (that’s the obvious first thing to look at; everybody uses that) or libzip (first hit on freshmeat)?

• zlib: The library itself only provides the compression, but there is a sample implementation of zip format you can use. The “zlib license” is slightly modified MIT/X license, so should be compatible. Trivial to build as part of your application.
• libzip: Supports zip format. BSD-revised license; you have to maintain it, but it’s basically equivalent to MIT/X license. Can also be linked statically.

In general, there is no technical reason why you’d need to link anything dynamically. You don’t. There is, however, a legal reason for LGPL-licensed libraries, because LGPL stops at dynamic object boundary, so static linking makes the other code LGPL as well.