Zlib level in JDK7

[Alan Bateman]

Steve Poole wrote:
> Hi all,  
>
> JDK7 is using zlib 1.2.3 (which was added to JDK7 back in 2009.) 
>
> Zlib's latest version is 1.2.5 - is there any expectation to move to
> 1.2.5 in JDK7?   It seems a real shame to ship JDK7 with a version of
> zlib that is so out of date.  
>
> More than happy to help contribute towards making this happen.  I would
> like to know if its already on someone's radar though  or to understand
> why this is a mad idea :-)
>
> Cheers
>
> Steve
>   
I don't think it's on anyone's radar. Sherman did the last update, 
bringing us up from a patched 1.1.3 to 1.2.3. The main thing with zlib 
updates is testing and bake time. Have you done any testing with 1.2.5? 
While there are some good reasons listed in the ChangeLog, I'm curious 
if they translate into any measurable improvement with the zip APIs. On 
the testing it would be interesting to check if 1.2.5 is used by any of 
the distros as I think (but might be wrong) that OpenJDK/IcedTea6 
project have changes to use /usr/lib/libzip.so rather than the snapshot 
in the jdk repository and so might already have experience using the 
latest version.

-Alan