Libpng

A multi-platform open source C library for creating, reading and writing PNG graphic files. It was originally created as a reference implementation and library for the PNG file format and is therefore written in an old ANSI C89 dialect to make it more portable and usable with even vintage C compilers.

There are currently two binary release available for OS/2, libpng 1.6.18 compiled with GCC and a libpng 1.5.27 compiled with the EMX version of the GCC, the EMX version is actually newer and should suffice in most cases, but it is a bit of a judgement call which version you actually choose to use.

There are older versions available on the usual download sites if you are porting older software that relied on older versions of the libpng library, but the API of the library was changed a bit between 1.4 and 1.5 branches, and again between 1.5 and 1.6, so using them might ease porting a bit, however it is recommended if possible to try to change the handling of the library I/O to at the least version 1.5.23 of the library as older versions have a nasty memory leaking bug and a few known vulnerabilities as well.

Version

• Last known OS/2 GCC version: libpng 1.6.18 (2015-08-30)
• Last known OS/2 EMX version: libpng 1.5.27 (2016-07-02)

Prerequisites

• EMX 0.9c or later for the EMX version
• kLIBC066 for the GCC version

Links

• Libpng homepage
• Libpng page on SourceForge
• Libpng SourceForge project page

Licence

Open source software released under the Zlib Licence, with a couple of extra essentially meaningless disclaimers and clauses that assert the open source nature of the library.

Authors

• Guy Eric Schalnat (Original author)
• Andreas Eric Dilger (Maintainer, 1996-1997)
• Glenn Randers-Pehrson (Current maintainer)
• Mikuláš Patočka (OS/2 EMX port)
• KO Myung-Hun (OS/2 GCC port)