Bzip2 Is About To See Its First Real Update In Close To A Decade

The Bzip2 open-source compression program is about to see its first real release since September 2010. This new version brings new build systems, security fixes, and much more.

Earlier this month we wrote about Bzip2 seeing a revival under new maintainership. With Federico Mena-Quintero having taken the reigns from Bzip2 creator Julian Seward, he's busy working on this imminent 1.0.7 release as well as longer-term plans like potentially porting parts of the program to Rust.

With the Bzip2 1.0.7 release coming soon, there is now Meson build system support given all the popularity of this cross-platform and speedy build system that's exploded in popularity recently. Additionally, there is also a CMake build system for other use-cases.

As there's been no official Bzip2 release in nine years, various Linux distributions have been carrying their own patches to address compile-time issues, security problems. bugs, etc. Many of those distribution patches are also now in the upstream Bzip2 code-base for the v1.0.7 milestone. Also included in this release is a brand new fix for a CVE security issue in Bzip2 around a possible out-of-bounds write.

More details on the upcoming Bzip2 1.0.7 release via this blog post by Federico.