@hackage / magic

Interface to C file/magic library

Changelog

Changelog for magic

All notable changes to this project are documented here.

1.1.2 (2026-06-09)

Backwards-compatible additions: existing code continues to work unchanged. This release rounds out the binding to cover (almost) all of libmagic's public API.

  • Added the remaining MagicFlag constructors from <magic.h>: MagicApple, MagicExtension, MagicCompressTransp, MagicNoCompressFork, MagicNodesc, and the whole no-check family (MagicNoCheckCompress, …Tar, …Soft, …Apptype, …Elf, …Text, …Cdf, …Csv, …Tokens, …Encoding, …Json, …Simh) plus MagicNoCheckBuiltin.
  • Added new operations in Magic.Operations: magicDescriptor (identify an open file descriptor), magicByteString (binary-safe identification of a strict ByteString), magicGetFlags, magicGetParam/magicSetParam with the new MagicParam type, magicCheck, magicGetPath, magicVersion, and magicErrno.
  • magicGetParam/magicSetParam require libmagic >= 5.21; magicGetFlags requires >= 5.05. All current systems are well past this.
  • New dependency: bytestring (a GHC boot library) for the ByteString entry points.
  • Moved the CMagic phantom type (the tag behind the Magic handle) into Magic.Types and removed the internal Magic.TypesLL module. CMagic is now documented and linkable from the exposed Magic.Types. Documentation polish throughout: full Haddock coverage with no warnings, @since annotations on the new API, and default values listed for each MagicParam.
  • magic_load is now imported as a safe foreign call (it was unsafe). It reads and parses the magic database from disk (blocking I/O), so under the threaded runtime loading a database no longer stalls other Haskell threads or blocks garbage collection. No API change.
  • Documented the thread-safety contract of the Magic handle: a single handle is not safe for concurrent use (serialise access or use one per thread); distinct handles are independent.

1.1.1 (2026-06-09)

No API changes: this release is a drop-in replacement for 1.1.

  • New maintainer: Philippe (philippedev101@gmail.com); package handed over from John Goerzen.
  • Modernised the Cabal package description (cabal-version: 2.4, proper library/test-suite stanzas, source-repository, tested-with).
  • Added an automatic pkgconfig flag: libmagic is now located via pkg-config when available, falling back transparently to plain extra-libraries linking otherwise.
  • Moved library sources under src/ and tests under test/ (no code or module-name changes).
  • Revived the original HUnit test suite in place: completed the unfinished Inittest module with real tests exercising the bindings against the system magic database, and fixed the runner to exit non-zero on failure.
  • Added a GitHub Actions CI workflow building and testing across GHC 9.6 / 9.8 / 9.10 / 9.12.
  • Removed dead imports so the library builds -Wall-clean.
  • Ships the unsafe-FFI fix (use safe FFI calls for blocking I/O) that was merged upstream after the 1.1 Hackage release but never published.

1.1 (2014-10) and earlier

Releases by John Goerzen. See the git history for details.