Patch provided by Shaul Kedem: Compressed files are back!

He even made a nice doc in wiki:
http://wiki.blender.org/bin/view.pl/Blenderdev/Blendgz

Usage: set the option "Compress File" in the main "File" pulldown menu.
This setting is a user-def, meaning it is not changed on reading files.
If you want it default, save it with CTRL+U.

The longest debate went over the file naming convention. Shaul started
with .blend.gz files, which gave issues in Blender because of the code
hanging out everywhere that detects blender files, and that appends the
.blend extension if needed.

Daniel Dunbar proposed to just save it as .blend, and not bother users
with such details. This is indeed the most elegant solution, with as
only drawback that old Blender executables cannot read it.
This drawback isn't very relevant at the moment, since we're heading
towards a release that isn't upward compatible anyway... the recode
going on on Meshes, Modfiers, Armatures, Poses, Actions, NLA already
have upward compatibility issues.
We might check - during the next month(s) - on a builtin system to
warn users in the future when we change things that make a file risky
to read in an older release.

1 files changed, 4 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/source/blender/blenloader/intern/readfile.h b/source/blender/blenloader/intern/readfile.h
index 6389cfaa6f5..efdfa9f76bf 100644
--- a/source/blender/blenloader/intern/readfile.h
+++ b/source/blender/blenloader/intern/readfile.h
@@ -33,6 +33,8 @@
 #ifndef READFILE_H
 #define READFILE_H
 
+#include "zlib.h"
+
 struct OldNewMap;
 struct MemFile;
 
@@ -52,6 +54,8 @@ typedef struct FileData {
 
 	// variables needed for reading from file
 	int filedes;
+	gzFile gzfiledes;
+
 	// now only in use for library appending
 	char filename[FILE_MAXDIR+FILE_MAXFILE];