After nearly two months of intense work, we're thrilled to announce a major milestone: AaruFormat V2 is done, integrated, and ready for testing in Aaru 6.0.0-alpha.13.
This release wasn’t just a version bump — it’s a full redesign of our archival format. Why? Because you surprised us.
We originally built AaruFormat to handle modest media: optical discs, floppies, maybe a few small hard drives from arcade machines. But then you started throwing multi-terabyte disk images at it. And while we love that kind of ambition, it exposed limitations we couldn’t ignore.
So we went back to the drawing board.
🛠️ What’s New in AaruFormat V2?
- Support for massive disk images — no more size bottlenecks.
- Modular and expandable design — built to grow with your needs.
- Cleaner, more mature architecture — shaped by everything we’ve learned.
- Open by design — now available as a standalone library: libaaruformat.
We want this format to be usable by anyone: emulator devs, preservationists, curious hackers. If you’re building something that needs robust archival support, libaaruformat is yours to use.
💬 Real Talk: It Took Time
Integrating the new format into Aaru wasn’t easy. Mental health challenges slowed us down — and we’re not going to hide that. But we kept going, and today we’re proud to say: it’s done.
Special thanks to our friend Jhenn, whose late-night encouragement and unwavering support were a quiet engine behind this release. You lifted us up when we needed it most. Thank you.
🚀 Try It Now
You can download Aaru 6.0.0-alpha.13 from the GitHub releases page. We hope it works flawlessly — but let’s be real, it’s software. If you find a bug, open an issue and we’ll squash it.
⚠️ Alpha Warning
This is an alpha release. That means:
- We do not guarantee the integrity or future compatibility of dumps made with this version.
- Use it for testing, exploring, and giving feedback — not for long-term preservation.
Thanks for pushing us to evolve. This community keeps surprising us, and we’re building Aaru to keep up with you.
Let us know what you think — and happy archiving!
