---
layout: post
title: diffoscope 138 released
author: Chris Lamb <lamby@debian.org>
---

The diffoscope maintainers are pleased to announce the release of diffoscope
version `138`. This version includes the following changes:

```
* New features & bug fixes:
  - Use dumppdf from python3-pdfminer if we do not see any other differences
    from pdftext, etc. (reproducible-builds/diffoscope#92)
  - Prevent a traceback when comparing two .rdx files directly as get_member
    will return a file even if the file is missing and not raise a KeyError
    exception; we therefore explicitly test for the existence of the file.
  * Don't allow errors within "Rscript" deserialisation to cause the entire
    operation to fail (for example if an external library cannot be loaded).
    (reproducible-builds/diffoscope#91)

* Reporting improvements:
  - Inject the supported file formats into the package long description and
    remove any duplicate comparator descriptions when formatting.
    (#reproducible-builds/diffoscope#90)
  - Print a potentially-helpful message if the PyPDF2 module is not installed
    (#reproducible-builds/diffoscope#92)
  - Weaken "Install the X package to get a better output" claim to "... may
    produce a better output" as this is not guaranteed.

* Code improvements:
  - Inline the RequiredToolNotFound.get_package method; only used once.
  - Drop deprecated "py36 = [..]" argument in pyproject.toml.
  - Factor out generation of comparator descriptions.
  - Add an upstream metadata file.
```

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