---
layout: post
title: diffoscope 127 released
author: Chris Lamb <lamby@debian.org>
---

The diffoscope maintainers are pleased to announce the release of diffoscope
version `127`. This version includes the following changes:

```
[ Chris Lamb ]
* Move build-dependency on python-argcomplete to the Python 3.x version to
  facilitate Python 2.x removal. (Closes: #942967)
* Overhaul the handling of GNU R .rdb files:
  - Rework and refactor the handling of .rdb files specifically with respect
    to locating the parallel .rdx file prior to inspecting the file to ensure
    that we do not add files to the user's filesystem in the case of directly
    comparing two .rdb files or, worse, overwriting a file in is place.
  - Use a ("""-formatted) docstring for our internal R script to dump
    variables.
  - Mask/hide standard errors; R will often produce noisy output that is not
    useful to us.
  - Don't include a useless and misleading "NULL".
  - Include all R object names are displayed, including ones beginning with a
    fullstop (".").
  - Sort package fields when dumping data for output stability.
  - Format package contents as "foo = bar" rather than using ugly and
    misleading brackets.
  - Include the object's type when dumping package contents.
  - Never read the site or user's R location environment configuration to
    ensure output stability.
  - Expose absolute paths in the semantic/human-readable output, preventing
    falling back to a useless hexdump.
* Improve the formatting of command lines:
  - Ensure newlines and other metacharacters appear escaped as "\n", etc.
  - Use the newline (etc.) escaped version of the commandline being executed
    in logging/debug output.
  - When displaying standard error, ensure use the escaped version too.
* Add support for easily masking the standard error of commands and use this
  in the ffprobe comparator.
* To match the libarchive container, raise a KeyError exception if we request
  an invalid member from a directory container.
* Correct string representation output in the traceback when we cannot locate
  a specific item in a container.

[ Mattia Rizzolo ]
* Run Debian autopkgtests against all Python versions.
```

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