The first release candidate for JHOVE 1.28 is now available for testing. JHOVE is an open-source file format identification, validation and characterisation tool for digital preservation and part of the OPF reference toolset. 

This release represents a real effort to clear the historic contribution backlog for JHOVE. The remaining pull requests are either documentation contributions or require more analysis. We received a large number of fixes and improvements from contributors around the world. We’d like to say a huge thank you to everyone who volunteered their time and effort to this release. 

Major new features of this release include:

• Finally, all messages have IDs, and we’ve removed the code that allows the creation of new ones without IDs.
• JHOVE will no longer report duplicate messages, which should yield shorter reports.
• A number of improvements to the PDF module, many of which address files that caused loop or overflow errors.
• Fixed a bug that caused an endless loop for some TIFF files and minor TIFF processing improvements.
• Improvements to NISO metadata handling.
• Java 17 compatibility.

There are many more fixes. While this release candidate is out, we will make some changes to the project structure and build, but these won’t change the code/functionality. We will also triage the bug list to discover any fixes to old issues that may have been missed.

Download JHOVE 1.28-RC

Read the draft release notes

Subscribe to the JHOVE user mailing list

Feedback welcome

We invite you to download and test the release candidate. To report an issue or make a feature request please add it to the JHOVE issue tracker on GitHub or contact us with any feedback. 

About JHOVE

JHOVE is maintained by the Open Preservation Foundation. JHOVE is open source and is free to download, use or modify. However, it is not free to host, maintain, support or develop. JHOVE is one of the most widely-used digital preservation tools, but currently, only OPF members support JHOVE financially as part of their membership fees. If you use JHOVE, please consider supporting its development by becoming an OPF member, or making a donation.