Back in May, after an enjoyable trip to the University of Leeds, I worked for a month on improving the Harvard Library’s FITS tool for combining the results of several file format identification and validation tools. The results were well received and the Harvard Library incorporated some of my work in the main line of FITS. Still, there were a lot of loose ends left and more work to be done.
Things are picking up again with a “FITS Blitz” that’s starting this week. Paul Wheatley writes that “in partnership with Harvard and the Open Planets Foundation (with support from Creative Pragmatics), SPRUCE is supporting a two week project to get the technical infrastructure in place to make FITS genuinely maintainable by the community. ‘FITS Blitz’ will merge the existing code branches and establish a comprehensive testing setup so that further code developments only find their way in when there is confidence that other bits of functionality haven’t been damaged by the changes.”
I’ve moved on to other things, so I won’t be able to participate, but I wish them every success.
Mad File Format Science 