Bug#903446: diffoscope: libarchive.exception.ArchiveError: Unrecognized archive format (via comparators.debian) with lie/2.2.2+dfsg-3

[Chris Lamb]

Gentile Mattia,

> I think the most proper thing to do would be to understand why it's not
> falling back to hex comparison when libarchive raises its exception?

We could have such a "brute force" solution indeed but poking very
quickly I think either the code or the comment is incorrect here:

    @classmethod
    def recognizes(cls, file):
        """Check if a file's type matches the one represented by this class.

        The default test returns True if the file matches these tests:

        (cls.FILE_TYPE_RE OR
         cls.FILE_TYPE_HEADER_PREFIX) AND
        (cls.FILE_EXTENSION_SUFFIX)
        
    [..]

We don't match the string returned from file(1) (ie. "data") but we
match the FILE_EXTENSION_SUFFIX (".a"), yet we still return True
for StaticLibFile.recognizes.

>From my reading of the above, we should return False.


Regards,

-- 
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     : :'  :     Chris Lamb
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