DROID 6.5 now available

[Dclipsham]

I’m thrilled to report that DROID 6.5 is now available to download from The National Archives’ website - https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/information-management/manage-information/preserving-digital-records/droid/

For this version there are two options to choose from: 

A ‘bundled’ version that includes Java OpenJDK version 11 for Windows users. This will be of particular interest for those users who are having difficulty with Oracle’s changes to Java licensing terms, which we know has been problematic for many, particularly at a local government level and smaller archives with limited IT support. OpenJDK is the Open Source reference implementation of Java and more information can be found here: https://openjdk.java.net/

A separate, ‘unbundled’ version is also available, which allows users to ‘choose their own’ Java runtime environment, whether it’s the fully licensed Oracle Java or one of the Open source implementations provided and supported by different Operating System vendors. This will be of particular interest to users of Linux-based systems, and vendors who package DROID among other tools. This version has been tested to work with versions of Java 1.8 onwards.

This version of DROID also includes:

• ‘Drag and drop’ functionality for the GUI version

• The ability to choose which ‘archival containers’ to scan within, such as Zip, 7Zip, RAR, Tar etc. (previously the choice was all or none).

• Improvements to the container signature processing engine, allowing more container signature scenarios to be articulated 

Plus a whole host of efficiency improvements, bug fixes, localisation improvements, improved test coverage, and much more. The full list of changes, and a list of the 13 contributors to this version (including many open source contributors outside of The National Archives), can be found here: https://github.com/digital-preservation/droid/releases

David

[Frozen_but_warming]

> I’m thrilled to report that DROID 6.5 is now available to download from The National Archives’ website

Good job, thanks, David.  The new manual is a big improvement too. 

Now, maybe it's time to move the group off of "Google?" 

--fbw