We're still shipping a v6.1 Handle resolver as part of DSpace. v9.1
is current. AFTER Dspace 7 we ought to look at updating. I don't
recall the current Handle documentation even mentioning a release as
old as the one we're using.
But I'd suggest that we also look at changing the resolver from a
dependency to a prerequisite, as we're doing with Solr. Then sites
can upgrade their resolvers without having to sync. with DSpace
upgrades, and DSpace doesn't have to rush out a release if there's a
security fix for the resolver that has to go out quickly. It's not
difficult to install a Handle resolver -- the one manual thing that
has to be done during configuration for DSpace is to add the custom
database backend which we would still supply.
Another thing to consider, if we would *require* a more recent
resolver release, is that we could get out of the business of
providing the backend. I think I've seen that recent resolvers will
optionally generate the Handle local-part and return it, during a
create request. We could drop the Handle table, instead using the
resolver in a more normal way and just recording the generated Handles
in object metadata as now. One arguable downside, IIRC, is that the
generated localpart is a UUID, so new DSpace Handles would be much
longer.