C# FAQ: What compression zipping capabilities has .NET

Microsoft .NET Framework, ASP.NET, Visual C# (CSharp, C Sharp, C-Sharp) Developer Training, Visual Studio

What compression and zipping capabilities does .NET have?

As of version 1.1, the .NET Framework did not contain any general purpose compression libraries. However, there are numerous third-party libraries available. SharpZipLib is a popular, free, open source compression library which can be used in commercial applications.

As of version 2.0, the .NET Framework contains a few compression routines. They can be found in the System.IO.Compression namespace. However, it does not provide support for .zip files proper.