[libextractor] GNU libextractor 1.5 released

[Christian Grothoff]

Dear all,

I'm happy to announce the release of GNU libextractor 1.5.


About GNU libextractor
======================

GNU Libextractor is a simple library used to extract meta data from
files. The goal is to provide developers of file-sharing networks,
browsers or WWW-indexing bots with a universal library to obtain simple
keywords and meta data to match against queries and to show to users
instead of only relying on filenames. GNU libextractor contains the
shell command "extract" that, similar to the well-known file command,
can extract meta data from a file an print the results to stdout.

Currently, GNU libextractor supports the following file formats: HTML,
MAN, PS, DVI, OLE2 (DOC, XLS, PPT), OpenOffice (sxw), StarOffice (sdw),
FLAC, MP3 (ID3v1 and ID3v2), OGG, WAV, S3M (Scream Tracker 3), XM
(eXtended Module), IT (Impulse Tracker), NSF(E) (NES music), SID (C64
music), EXIV2, JPEG, GIF, PNG, TIFF, DEB, RPM, TAR(.GZ), LZH, LHA, RAR,
ZIP, CAB, 7-ZIP, AR, MTREE, PAX, CPIO, ISO9660, SHAR, RAW, XAR FLV,
REAL, RIFF (AVI), MPEG, QT and ASF. Also, various additional MIME types
are detected.

GNU libextractor uses helper-libraries (plugins) to perform the actual
extraction.  As a result, GNU libextractor can be extended simply by
installing additional plugins.  Writing robust parsers can be difficult.
GNU libextractor protects the main applications from haning or crashing
plugins by executing all plugins out-of-process.

GNU libextractor is written in C.  However, a binding for Java exists.


Noteworthy improvements in 1.5
==============================

* Fixes potential crash in FLAC plugin (NULL dereference) for certain
  ill-formed inputs.
* Fixes potential crash in WAV plugin (SIGFPE) for certain ill-formed
  inputs.

Neither crash should affect ordinary applications as by default
libextractor runs the plugin logic in a separate process.  The crashes
also should not be exploitable, the main impact is a loss of performance
as the plugin's process must be restarted (via fork()).

However, if the "in-process" execution option is used, the crash will be
relevant to applications using GNU libextractor.


Availability
============

The GNU libextractor source code is available from all GNU FTP mirrors.
The Java binding is a separate download.

GNU libextractor on a FTP mirror near you
  http://ftpmirror.gnu.org/libextractor/libextractor-1.5.tar.gz
GNU libextractor Java binding on a FTP mirror near you
  http://ftpmirror.gnu.org/libextractor/libextractor-java-1.0.0.tar.gz
GNU libextractor on the primary GNU FTP server
  ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/libextractor/libextractor-1.5.tar.gz
GNU libextractor Java binding on the primary GNU FTP server
  ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/libextractor/libextractor-java-1.0.0.tar.gz

Further Information

GNU libextractor Homepage
    http://www.gnu.org/s/libextractor/
GNU libextractor Manual
    http://www.gnu.org/s/libextractor/manual/
GNU libextractor Bug tracker
    https://gnunet.org/bugs/
IRC
    irc://irc.freenode.net/#gnunet


Thank you for your attention.

Happy hacking!


Christian Grothoff

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