---
layout: post
title: diffoscope 71 released
author: Chris Lamb <lamby@debian.org>
---

The diffoscope maintainers are pleased to announce the release of diffoscope
version `71`. This version includes the following changes:

```
[ Chris Lamb ]
* New features:
  - Add a machine-readable JSON output format. (Closes: #850791)
  - Show results from debugging packages last. (Closes: #820427)
  - Add a --max-text-report-size option. (Closes: #851147)
* Bug fixes:
  - Clean all temp files in signal handler thread instead of attempting to
    bubble exception back to the main thread. (Closes: #852013)
  - Prevent FTBFS by loading fixtures as UTF-8 in case surrounding terminal
    is not Unicode-aware. (Closes: #852926)
  - Fix errors when comparing directories with non-directories.
    (Closes: #835641)
  - Fix behaviour of setting report maximums to zero (ie. no limits)
* Tests:
  - Test the RPM "fallback" comparison.
  - Test the Deb{Changes,Buildinfo,Dsc} fallback comparisons.
  - Test --progress and --status-fd output.
  - Add tests for symlinks differing in destination.
  - When comparing two empty directories, ensure that the mtime of the
    directory is consistent to avoid non-deterministic failures.
  - Smoke test profiling output.
  - Ensure we ignore invalid JSON files correctly.
  - Ensure 2nd source of a Difference is a string, not just the 1st.
  - Don't report on test coverage for some internal error messages.
* Misc:
  - Add docs about releasing signed tarballs.
  - Drop the incomplete list of external tools from README.rst.
  - Add debian/watch file with cryptographic signature verification.
  - Drop CpioContent command now that we use libarchive.
  - Use a singleton to manage our Comparator classes.
  - Many small optimisations and code cleanups.

[ Brett Smith ]
* diffoscope.diff: Improve FIFO writing robustness.

[ Ximin Luo ]
* Fix bug introduced in commit 36d1c964 that only worked "accidentally".
* Fix lazy expression; filter is lazy in Python 3.

[ Mattia Rizzolo ]
* Override the debian-watch-file-in-native-package lintian tag.

[ anthraxx ]
* Arch package changed from cdrkit to cdrtools.

[ Holger Levsen ]
* Restore history section in README, explaining this was started in Debian.
```

You find out more by [visiting the project homepage](https://diffoscope.org).