gzip compression library

[DynamicCake]

Currently, there are no mature compression libraries. The closest thing I could find is compresso which isn't 1.0 and isn't being actively worked on.

I am making this issue with the intent of it being added to Gleam SaaS ecosystem.

[lpil]

Sounds good! What compression algorithms would you be looking for?

[inoas]

My suggestions on discord were: gzip, pkzip, bz2, 7zip?

[lpil]

Do we actually have use cases for all of these? gzip seems like it could be commonly useful for SaaS but I'm not sure about the others.

[inoas]

• gzip seems like a no brainer
• pkzip is the old windows standard still prevalent
• 7zip seems to be the emerging default - if you ask me - but don't take my word for it. At maximum compression it yields excellent results and it is becoming more prevalent.
• not sure about bz2

[inoas]

Would the library support both, compression and decompression? or should it be two libraries even (with a shared library underneath if it makes sense?)

[lpil]

Doing both compression and decompression in the same package reasonable to me.

I can't see much reason to couple multiple algorithms together into a single library. Unless their implementations share a good deal of code then one package per compression algorithm seems better to me from a security and maintenance point of view.

pkzip is the old windows standard still prevalent
7zip seems to be the emerging default - if you ask me - but don't take my word for it. At maximum compression it yields excellent results and it is becoming more prevalent.

Neither of those seem related to SaaS, so I don't think we'd have them on our list of packages to provide a good SaaS foundation.

[inoas]

All of that sounds reasonable, for saas it is probably gzip compress/decompress.
For web stuff maybe brotli: https://www.oshyn.com/blog/gzip-vs-brotli which has better ratios and is now wildly supported: https://caniuse.com/brotli