Zlib-ng 2.0 Released As More Performant + Modern Zlib Fork

Zlib-ng 2.0 is out today as the first stable release of this zlib fork focused on "next generation" systems with speedier performance and a more modern API, among other changes.

Zlib-ng 2.0 sports a modern native API as well as a Zlib-compatible API. This fork has cleaned up the original code-base, supports making use of modern CPU intrinsics like AVX2 / NEON / VSX, pulling improvements from Zlib forks maintained by Intel and CloudFlare, and a variety of other enhancements.

Zlib-ng hopes to coexist with upstream Zlib while being more modern and forward-looking, especially given Zlib carrying a lot of baggage from over the years and portability to now obscure platforms, catering to old compilers, etc.

Performance metrics comparing Zlib-ng to Zlib and Gzip can be found via this discussion item.

More details on Zlib-ng 2.0 as the project's first stable release can be found via GitHub.