metaforce/hecl-gui/quazip/quazip/doc/index.dox

/**
\mainpage QuaZIP - Qt/C++ wrapper for Minizip

\section overview Overview

<a href="http://www.winimage.com/zLibDll/minizip.html">Minizip, or
Gilles Vollant's ZIP/UNZIP package</a> is a simple C library
for creating, appending and reading ZIP archives.

<a href="http://qt.io/">Qt</a> is a very powerful cross-platform C++
library with a lot of useful modules and classes. With %Qt, you can
create rich GUIs, perform networking activities, accessing databases
and much much more. If Java is “write once, run everywhere”, %Qt
is “write once, compile everywhere” which is not that bad either.

One thing %Qt can't do out-of-the-box is write and read ZIP archives.
Of course, you can do it with Minizip, but Minizip has its own
interface which isn't exactly compatible with %Qt. Namely, in %Qt
there is an abstract class called QIODevice, which
is Qt-speak for “input/output stream”. There are a lot of classes
that accept QIODevice to write some useful things to it—you could
serialize XML to a QIODevice, for example. Therefore, wouldn't it
be useful if you could open a QIODevice that would write directly
to a file in a ZIP archive? Or read from one? That's exactly where
QuaZIP comes into the picture.

Technically speaking, QuaZIP is a simple C++ wrapper around Minizip.
Or you could call it an implementation of the Adapter pattern.  With
QuaZIP, both ZIP files and files inside ZIP archives can be accessed
with QIODevice API. You can even write ZIP files to a sequential devices
like TCP sockets, although some limitations apply in this case.

\section download Download QuaZIP

The latest downloads are available from the
<a href="https://github.com/stachenov/quazip/releases">GitHub page</a>.
Downloads are in source format. The documentation you're reading
right now can be build with the “doxygen” tool if you have one
installed. Just run it from the project directory and it will
create the “doc” directory for you. If you don't have Doxygen
installed, you can still read offline docs in the “quazip/doc”
subdir and in the header files. Don't confuse those dirs:

- “doc” in the project's root is where Doxygen \em output is.
- “quazip/doc” is where Doxygen \em input is, along with the header
  files.

Older downloads are available from
<a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/quazip/">QuaZIP project's page at SourceForge.net</a>.

\section platforms Platforms supported

QuaZIP is regularly tested on the following platforms:
- linux-g++ (Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, %Qt 5.5.1)
- linux-g++ (CentOS 6.9, %Qt 4.6.2)
- win32-msvc (MS VS/VC 2013 64-bit, %Qt 5.9.2)

It should work fine on any platform supported by %Qt 4.6.2 or later.
In theory, older versions might work as well, but aren't guaranteed
to.

\section whats-new What is new in this version of QuaZIP?

See the NEWS.txt file supplied with the distribution.

\section Dependencies

Just <a href="http://www.zlib.org/">zlib</a> and %Qt 4/5. Sometimes
you can get away with using zlib library bundled into %Qt, but
usually you need at least its headers.

\section building Building, testing and installing

\note Instructions given in this section assume that you are
using some UNIX dialect, but the build process should be very similar
on win32-g++ platform too. On other platforms it's essentially the
same process, maybe with some qmake adjustments not specific to
QuaZIP itself.

To build the library, run:
\verbatim
$ cd /wherever/quazip/source/is/quazip-x.y.z/quazip
$ qmake <qmake args> [PREFIX=where-to-install]
$ make
\endverbatim

Make sure that you have %Qt 4/5 installed with all required headers and
utilities (that is, including the 'dev' or 'devel' package on Linux)
and that you run qmake utility of the %Qt 4/5, not some other version
you may have already installed (you may need to type full path to
qmake like /usr/local/qt4/bin/qmake).

To reconfigure (with another PREFIX, for example), just run
\verbatim
qmake distclean
\endverbatim
and then qmake with the appropriate arguments again.

Usually, it is needed to specify additional include path or libraries
in qmake args (see qmake reference in the %Qt documentation). For
example:

\verbatim
$ qmake LIBS+=-L/usr/local/zlib/lib INCLUDEPATH+=/usr/local/zlib/include
\endverbatim
(note abscence of “-I” before the include path and the presence of “-L”
before the lib path)

Also note that you may or may not need to define ZLIB_WINAPI (qmake
DEFINES+=ZLIB_WINAPI) when linking to zlib on Windows, depending on
how zlib was built (generally, if using zlibwapi.dll, this define is
needed).

To install compiled library:
\verbatim
$ make install
\endverbatim

By default, QuaZIP compiles as a DLL/SO, but you have other
options:
- Just copy appropriate source files to your project and use them,
but you need to define QUAZIP_STATIC before including any QuaZIP
headers (best done as a compiler option). This will save you from
possible side effects of importing/exporting QuaZIP symbols.
- Compile it as a static library using CONFIG += staticlib qmake
option. QUAZIP_STATIC is defined automatically by qmake in this case.

Binary compatibility is guaranteed between minor releases starting
with version 0.5, thanks to the Pimpl idiom. That is, the next binary
incompatible version will be 1.x in the worst case.

\section test Testing

To check if QuaZIP's basic features work OK on your platform, you may
wish to compile the test suite provided in test directory:
\verbatim
$ cd /wherever/quazip/source/is/quazip-x.y.z/qztest
$ qmake
$ make
$ ./qztest
\endverbatim

Note that the test suite looks for the quazip library in the “quazip”
folder of the project (“../quazip”), but you may wish to use LIBS
for some systems (Windows often puts the library in the separate
“debug” or “release” directory). If you wish to use the quazip
version that's already installed, provide the appropriate path.

On some systems you may need to set PATH, LD_LIBRARY_PATH or
SHLIB_PATH to get “qztest” to actually run and to use the right
version.

If everything went fine, the test suite should report a lot of PASS
messages. If something goes wrong, it will provide details and a
warning that some tests failed.

\section using Using

See \ref usage “usage page”.

\section contacts Authors and contacts

This wrapper has been written by Sergei Tachenov.
This is my first open source project, and it's pretty old, but it
works and many people are happily using it, including myself.

If you have anything to say to me about QuaZIP library, feel free to
do so (read the \ref faq first, though). I can not promise,
though, that I fix all the bugs you report in, add any features you
want, or respond to your critics, or respond to your feedback at all.
I may be busy, I may be tired of working on QuaZIP, I may be even
dead already (you never know...).

To report bugs or to post ideas about what should be done, use
<a href="https://github.com/stachenov/quazip">GitHub</a>. It's an
awesome site, where you can report bugs or register yourself an
account, fork QuaZIP (don't hesitate to do so), create a new branch,
make some changes and issue a
<a href="https://help.github.com/articles/about-pull-requests/">pull
request</a>, which is GitHub's way of offering patches. See CONTRIBUTING.md
file for details.

Do not use e-mail to report bugs, please. Reporting bugs and problems
with GitHub has that advantage that
it is visible to public, and I can always search for open tickets
that were created long ago. It is highly unlikely that I will search
my mail for that kind of stuff, so if a bug reported by mail isn't
fixed immediately, it will likely be forgotten forever.

Old bugs may still be available at
<a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/quazip/">SourceForge</a>
for reference.

Copyright (C) 2005-2018 Sergei Tachenov and contributors
*/