zlibCE is a native (that means C, not C#), open-source, royalty free compression library that is unencumbered by patents.  It is not to the Linux zlibc Compressing File-I/O Library.

OpenNETCF provides a "port" of the zlib 1.2.3 library for Windows CE-based devices, including Pocket PCs, SmartPhones, Windows Mobile devices as well as the entire realm of generic Windows CE devices. We provide the full original source, modified slightly for the CE build environment, along with Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Solution and Project files and compiled binaries for ARMv4 and ARMv4I for CE 4.2 and CE 5.0.  We have also stripped out all of the makefiles and project trees that are not relevent to Windows CE development.  If you are looking for those, we recommend that you visit the origin.

UPDATED 6/28/07
We now provide managed wrappers for CF 1.0 and CF 2.0, both for Visual Studio 2003 and Visual Studio 2005, along with C# and VB.NET sample projects showing usage in each case.

If you need a compiled binary for a platform we don't have, let us know.  If it's for CE 4.2, 5.0 or 6.0 and you provide us an SDK, we may be able to add the binary to the distribution.  We say "may" because we're not promising we will do it, and if we do, we won't promise when.

For more information on zlib, the original authors visit the zlib Home Site.

Download the zlibCE 1.2.3 source and binaries, including the source for all managed wrappers (650k zip)