Restore exiftool downloads by moving to the current production release - #431
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The build has been failing in fits-tool-installer because both exiftool 13.50 archives return 404. SourceForge only retains the four most recently uploaded versions, so 13.50 aged off the download server once 13.55, 13.57, 13.58 and 13.59 were published. Move to 13.55, the current production release, and take the Perl distribution from CPAN, which permanently archives every exiftool production release, so this leg cannot age out again. The Windows executable is not published to CPAN and still comes from SourceForge. Both checksums match the values published by upstream in checksums-13.55.txt.
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This PR proposes restoring the exiftool downloads used by
fits-tool-installer, so thatmvn clean testcan get pastgenerate-resourcesagain, by moving to exiftool 13.55 and taking the Perl distribution from CPAN's permanent archive (fixes #429). We include this PR work along with a full history of your repo at https://eastagiletracker.com/projects/374. You can sign in with your GitHub ID to claim ownership of the project.What changed and why
At current
main(8613bf6) the build cannot reach a single test, because both exiftool 13.50 archives named intools.propertiesnow return 404:The Windows archive
exiftool-13.50_64.zipis gone as well, so both legs ofinstallExiftool()are dead, not just the one in the traceback. The cause is that the exiftool project on SourceForge keeps only its four most recently uploaded versions — right now 13.55, 13.57, 13.58 and 13.59, and nothing older. The existing advice intools.propertiesto pick a production release does not protect against that on its own: 13.50 was a production release, and it aged off the download server anyway once four newer versions had been published.The change moves the pin to 13.55, which is the current production release ("The most recent production release is Version 13.55", exiftool's own
Changes, Apr 7 2026), and switches the Perl distribution to CPAN, which permanently archives every exiftool production release — 13.36, 13.44, 13.50 and 13.55 are all still retrievable there today. That leg can no longer age out. The Windows executable is not published to CPAN, so it necessarily stays on SourceForge; the comment in the file now records both facts, so the next person upgrading knows why the two URLs point at different hosts.Both checksums are the ones upstream publishes in
checksums-13.55.txt:I also confirmed CPAN's copy of
Image-ExifTool-13.55.tar.gzis byte-identical to SourceForge's — both hash to64fca46ac6d170abfaf3b460a4845649— so this is the same artifact from a longer-lived host, not a repackaging.How this was verified
Before the change, on a clean checkout of
main:mvn -B clean testends inBUILD FAILUREatfits-tool-installerwith the 404 above, and 0 tests execute.After the change:
mvn -B generate-resourcesreportsSuccessfully installed exiftool 13.55along with mediainfo, file and jpylyzer, and ends inBUILD SUCCESS.perl tools/exiftool/perl/exiftool -verprints13.55, andtools/exiftool/windows/exiftool.exeis extracted as expected.mvn -B clean testthen runs the whole suite for the first time:Tests run: 120, Failures: 70, Errors: 2, Skipped: 21.Those remaining failures are my environment, not this change — I am not running
docker/Dockerfile-test, so I have nofile5.43 built from source, noAmerica/New_Yorktimezone and no system mediainfo libraries, and most of the diffs are of the formExpected attribute value 'did not run' but was 'failed'. To be certain none of it came from the version move, I ran the identical suite a second time with exiftool pinned back to 13.50, fetched from CPAN so that it downloads at all — byte-identical to whattools.propertiespins today, MD54c9b544800bca220d21ecced4585f4d1. The result was the same 120 tests with exactly the same 72 failing, none added and none removed. The bump therefore changes nothing the suite can observe; the residual failures are worth re-confirming on your own test image, where I would expect them to be green.One thing worth flagging: #419 also edits
tools.properties(it proposes 13.50, the version that has since aged off SourceForge), so whichever of the two lands second will need a small conflict resolution in this file.How this was managed
This work was tracked on a board imported from this repository's own issues and pull requests — 426 stories and 6 labels — with this fix carried by the story for #429 at https://eastagiletracker.com/projects/374/stories/226689, on the board at https://eastagiletracker.com/projects/374.
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no-more-prson this pull request and we won't open any further ones on your repositories.Lawrence W. Sinclair
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