---
layout: post
title: diffoscope 83 released
author: Chris Lamb <lamby@debian.org>
---

The diffoscope maintainers are pleased to announce the release of diffoscope
version `83`. This version includes the following changes:

```
[ Chris Lamb ]
* New features:
  * Add comparator for Fontconfig cache files.
* Bug fixes:
  - Don't fail when run under perversely recursive input files. See
    <https://research.swtch.com/zip> for more information. (Closes: #780761)
  - Prevent a traceback when using --new-file with containers by passing
    progress_name of the Member and not the member itself. (Closes: #861286)
  - Drop passing has_differences around, fixing an issue with generating
    files called '-'.
* Cleanups & refactoring:
  - Reorder and rename FIFOFeeder arguments to prevent tools incorrectly
    parsing as a SyntaxError.
  - Refactor HTML and text presenters so they fit the same interface.
  - Refactor Presenter to a singleton manager.
  - Split output and configuration of presenters.
  - Prevent abstraction-level violation by defining visual diff support on
    the Presenter classes.
  - Split diffoscope.difference into a feeders module.
  - Document various variables.
  - PEP8-ify and tidy a lot of files.

[ Ximin Luo ]
* New features:
  - Add --max-container-depth CLI option.
  - Add various traverse_* methods to Difference.
  - Weigh elements in progress bar by their size.
  - Add a reader for the JSON format.
  - Add a --exclude-command CLI for filtering out long-running commands like
    "readelf --debug-dump=info".
  - Don't show +/- controls for differences with no children.
  - Use unicode chars for the +/- controls instead of punctuation.
* Bug fixes:
  - Fix --exclude control.tar.gz.
  - Make the progress bar play nicely with --debug.
  - When enforcing max-container-depth, show which internal files differ,
    without showing details.
  - Fix JSON presenter to handle recursion properly.
  - Avoid a ZeroDivisionError in the progress bar
  - Fix create_limited_print_func.
* Tests:
  - Fix failing tests due to logging global state.
  - Add tips about running with TMPDIR=/run/shm.
* Cleanups & refactoring:
  - Remove unnecessary "dest" args to argparse.
  - Refactor DirectoryContainer to be more similar to Container.
  - Refactor Container abstract method names.
  - Remove unused imports and tidy up Container.comparisons().
  - rename get_{filtered => adjusted}_members_sizes for consistency.
  - Move tests/comparators/utils up one directory.
  - html-dir: show/hide diff comments which can be very large.
  - Refactor html-dir presenter to a class instance avoiding global state.
  - Move side-by-side and linediff algorithms to difference.py.
  - difference: has_children -> has_visible_children, and take into account
    comments.
  - Move ydiff/linediff from diffoscope.{difference => diff} to group
    unified_diff-related things together

[ Maria Glukhova ]
* New features:
  - Add visual comparisons for JPEG, ICO, PNG and static GIF images.
    (Closes: #851359)
* Test improvements:
  - Test that external tools providers are being returned when tool is not
    found.
  - Add tests for OutputParserError and ContainerExtractionError.
* Cleanups & refactoring:
  * Ignore text difference if we have a visual one.
  * Fix link formatting and typo in README.
  * Rename html_output to compute_visual_diffs and explain its purpose.
  * Removed duplicated functions from diff.py.

[ Mattia Rizzolo ]
* Export junit-xml style test report when building on Jenkins.

[ anthraxx ]
* Extend external Arch Linux tools list.
```

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