Initially I wrote a partial client in python, but I am not an advanced enough python programmer to get the necessary speed for checksum calculations in native python. So I implemented the underlying checksum algorithm and supporting functions for tracking the ranges of known/unknown blocks in C, as a small library. Doing so proved useful in keeping the algorithm and the client implementation separate.

libzsync implements the rolling checksum, and provides functions for checksumming blocks and the stronger MD4 checksum. It is pulled in for both the client, and the program to generate the control file, so they use the same code for calculating checksums.