README-hacking

These notes are only really useful to people trying to work with checked-out
sources, and aren't all that useful to people trying to distribute or build
their own copy for personal use.
Building requires a C99 or better compiler (gcc or clang, preferably).

After cloning, the most basic way to get going is to use:

	./bootstrap; ./configure; make 

to get a working executable in the top-level directory. 

It may be a good idea to do 

	git submodule foreach git pull origin master

to update to the latest gnulib sources before using ./bootstrap.

If you want to track memory usage or use the Trace macro and its variants,
as well as see masses of verbose warnings, pass `--enable-advanced-debug` 
to ./configure.

The files lib/try.h and lib/try.c implement exception handling, as you'd expect
from e.g. Python or Java. It's worth reading lib/try.h to get a feel for how
they're intended to work before diving into the code.

The copy of zlib included here is the latest from Mark Adler's develop branch
at https://github.com/madler/zlib (commit 79baebe as of writing this readme)
with minor modifications to allow it to compile; i.e. #include<config.h> 
inserted where required. 
Similarly with zopfli, from https://github.com/google/zopfli master (ef109ddf).

Of course, you could choose to disable those with configure options, though
with regards to zlib, if a suitable zlib isn't found on your system configure
will prefer to give you a working build using static linking versus failing or
a broken build that will produce a useless executable.

Enabling zopfli increases the executable's size by about 50%; as does static
linking with zlib. Stripped and at default configuration (dynamic linking and 
with zopfli) the executable is about twice as big as gzip 1.9; without zopfli
it's a bit smaller than 1.9.

Happy hacking!