Zstandard wrapper for zlib

The main objective of creating a zstd wrapper for zlib is to allow a quick and smooth transition to zstd for projects already using zlib.

Required files

To build the zstd wrapper for zlib the following files are required:

zlib.h
a static or dynamic zlib library
zlibWrapper/zstd_zlibwrapper.h
zlibWrapper/zstd_zlibwrapper.c
a static or dynamic zstd library

The first two files are required by all projects using zlib and they are not included with the zstd distribution. The further files are supplied with the zstd distribution.

Embedding the zstd wrapper within your project

Let's assume that your project that uses zlib is compiled with: gcc project.o -lz

To compile the zstd wrapper with your project you have to do the following:

change all references with #include "zlib.h" to #include "zstd_zlibwrapper.h"
compile your project with zstd_zlibwrapper.c and a static or dynamic zstd library

The linking should be changed to: gcc project.o zstd_zlibwrapper.o -lz -lzstd

Enabling zstd compression within your project

After embedding the zstd wrapper within your project the zstd library is turned off by default. Your project should work as before with zlib. There are two options to enable zstd compression:

compilation with -DZWRAP_USE_ZSTD=1 (or using #define ZWRAP_USE_ZSTD 1 before #include "zstd_zlibwrapper.h")
using the void ZWRAP_useZSTDcompression(int turn_on) function (declared in #include "zstd_zlibwrapper.h")

During decompression zlib and zstd streams are automatically detected and decompressed using a proper library. This behavior can be changed using ZWRAP_setDecompressionType(ZWRAP_FORCE_ZLIB) what will make zlib decompression slightly faster.

Example

We have take the file test/example.c from the zlib library distribution and copied it to zlibWrapper/examples/example.c. After compilation and execution it shows the following results:

zlib version 1.2.8 = 0x1280, compile flags = 0x65
uncompress(): hello, hello!
gzread(): hello, hello!
gzgets() after gzseek:  hello!
inflate(): hello, hello!
large_inflate(): OK
after inflateSync(): hello, hello!
inflate with dictionary: hello, hello!

Then we have changed #include "zlib.h" to #include "zstd_zlibwrapper.h", compiled the example.c file with -DZWRAP_USE_ZSTD=1 and linked with additional zstd_zlibwrapper.o -lzstd. We were forced to turn off the following functions: test_gzio, test_flush, test_sync which use currently unsupported features. After running it shows the following results:

zlib version 1.2.8 = 0x1280, compile flags = 0x65
uncompress(): hello, hello!
inflate(): hello, hello!
large_inflate(): OK
inflate with dictionary: hello, hello!

The script used for compilation can be found at zlibWrapper/Makefile.

The measurement of performace of Zstandard wrapper for zlib

The zstd distribution contains a tool called zwrapbench which can measure speed and ratio of zlib, zstd, and the wrapper. The benchmark is conducted using given filenames or synthetic data if filenames are not provided. The files are read into memory and joined together. It makes benchmark more precise as it eliminates I/O overhead. Many filenames can be supplied as multiple parameters, parameters with wildcards or names of directories can be used as parameters with the -r option. One can select compression levels starting from -b and ending with -e. The -i parameter selects minimal time used for each of tested levels. With -B option bigger files can be divided into smaller, independently compressed blocks. The benchmark tool can be compiled with make zwrapbench using zlibWrapper/Makefile.

Improving speed of streaming compression

During streaming compression the compressor never knows how big is data to compress. Zstandard compression can be improved by providing size of source data to the compressor. By default streaming compressor assumes that data is bigger than 256 KB but it can hurt compression speed on smaller data. The zstd wrapper provides the ZWRAP_setPledgedSrcSize() function that allows to change a pledged source size for a given compression stream. The function will change zstd compression parameters what may improve compression speed and/or ratio. It should be called just after deflateInit(). The function is only helpful when data is compressed in blocks. There will be no change in case of deflateInit() immediately followed by deflate(strm, Z_FINISH) as this case is automatically detected.

Reusing contexts

The ordinary zlib compression of two files/streams allocates two contexts:

for the 1st file calls deflateInit, deflate, ..., deflate, defalateEnd
for the 2nd file calls deflateInit, deflate, ..., deflate, defalateEnd

The speed of compression can be improved with reusing a single context with following steps:

initialize the context with deflateInit
for the 1st file call deflate, ..., deflate
for the 2nd file call deflateReset, deflate, ..., deflate
free the context with deflateEnd

To check the difference we made experiments using zwrapbench with zstd and zlib compression (both at level 3) with 4 KB blocks. The input data was git repository downloaded from https://github.com/git/git/archive/master.zip and converted to uncompressed tarball. The table below shows that reusing contexts has a minor influence on zlib but it gives improvement for zstd. In our example (the last 2 lines) it gives 15% better compression speed and 6% better decompression speed.

Compression type	Compression	Decompress.	Compr. size	Ratio
zlib 1.2.8	54.77 MB/s	176.2 MB/s	8928115	2.910
zlib 1.2.8 not reusing a context	54.98 MB/s	174.6 MB/s	8928115	2.910
zlib 1.2.8 with zlibWrapper and reusing a context	55.16 MB/s	176.8 MB/s	8928115	2.910
zlib 1.2.8 with zlibWrapper not reusing a context	54.11 MB/s	174.5 MB/s	8928115	2.910
zstd 1.1.0 using ZSTD_CCtx	108.03 MB/s	319.8 MB/s	8962336	2.899
zstd 1.1.0 using ZSTD_CStream	107.34 MB/s	307.3 MB/s	8981368	2.893
zstd 1.1.0 with zlibWrapper and reusing a context	107.52 MB/s	297.3 MB/s	8981368	2.893
zstd 1.1.0 with zlibWrapper not reusing a context	91.45 MB/s	279.8 MB/s	8981368	2.893

Compatibility issues

After enabling zstd compression not all native zlib functions are supported. When calling unsupported methods they put error message into strm->msg and return Z_STREAM_ERROR.

Supported methods:

deflateInit
deflate (with exception of Z_FULL_FLUSH, Z_BLOCK, and Z_TREES)
deflateSetDictionary
deflateEnd
deflateReset
deflateBound
inflateInit
inflate
inflateSetDictionary
inflateReset
inflateReset2
compress
compress2
compressBound
uncompress

Ignored methods (they do nothing):

deflateParams

Unsupported methods:

gzip file access functions
deflateCopy
deflateTune
deflatePending
deflatePrime
deflateSetHeader
inflateGetDictionary
inflateCopy
inflateSync
inflatePrime
inflateMark
inflateGetHeader
inflateBackInit
inflateBack
inflateBackEnd

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