1 Only the most important changes more recent than version 0.6 are noted here.
4 This release is minor bug-fixes only:
6 Stored files with size exactly 4 GiB (4,294,967,296 bytes) are now
7 decompressed correctly.
9 Paths passed to wimlib_extract_paths() may now use either forwards or
10 backwards slashes, as documented.
12 Fixed a potential stack overflow when extracting solid archives (packed
13 streams) containing more than about 100000 files.
16 Support for extracting and updating the new version 3584 WIMs has been
17 added. These WIMs typically pack many streams ("files") together into a
18 single compressed resource, thereby saving space. This degrades the
19 performance of random access (such as that which occurs on a mounted
20 image), but optimizations have been implemented for extraction. These
21 new WIM files also typically use a new compression format (LZMS), which
22 is similar to LZMA and can offer a better compression ratio than LZX.
23 These new WIM files can be created using `wimcapture' with
24 the '--compress=lzms --pack-streams' options. Note: this new WIM format
25 is used by the Windows 8 web downloader, but important segments of the
26 raw '.esd' files are encrypted, so wimlib will not be able to extract
27 such files until they are first decrypted.
29 wimlib now supports extracting files and directories from a WIM image
30 based on a "listfile" that itself contains the list of paths to extract.
31 For `wimextract', the syntax is to specify @LISTFILE instead of a PATH,
32 and for the library itself, the new APIs are wimlib_extract_pathlist()
33 and wimlib_extract_paths(). Path globs containing wildcard characters
36 For searching WIM files, wimlib now has configurable case sensitivity.
37 The default on Windows is still case-insensitive and the default on
38 UNIX-like systems is still case-sensitive, but this can be overridden
39 on either platform through flags to wimlib_global_init(). For
40 `wimlib-imagex', the environmental variable WIMLIB_IMAGEX_IGNORE_CASE
41 can be set to 1 or 0 for case-insensitive or case-sensitive behavior,
44 Support for compression chunk sizes greater than the default of 32768
45 bytes has been added. A larger chunk size typically results in a better
46 compression ratio. However, the MS implementation is seemingly not
47 compatible with all chunk sizes, especially for LZX compression, so the
48 defaults remain unchanged, with the exception of the new LZMS-compressed
49 WIMs, which use a larger chunk size by default.
51 The compression/decompression API exported by wimlib has been changed.
52 Now one set of functions handles all supported compression formats.
54 `wimcapture' and `wimappend' will now display the progress of scanning
55 the directory tree to capture, in addition to the progress of writing
56 data to the WIM. The '--verbose' option no longer does anything. The
57 library API change for this is the addition of several members to
58 `struct wimlib_progress_info_scan' available to progress callbacks.
60 `mkwinpeimg' now correctly handles the '--start-script' option when the
61 start script is not in the working directory.
63 Sequential extraction, previously requested by using
64 WIMLIB_EXTRACT_FLAG_SEQUENTIAL, is now the default.
65 WIMLIB_EXTRACT_FLAG_FILE_ORDER can be used to get the old default
66 behavior (extract in file order).
69 The new LZX compressor added in v1.5.2 has been improved and is now
70 enabled by default, except when `wimcapture' or `wimappend' is run
71 *without* the '--compress' option, in which case the faster LZX
72 compressor is used (the same as before). This behavior is reasonably
73 consistent with ImageX which actually uses "fast" (XPRESS) compression
74 by default. In those cases, use '--compress=maximum' to explicitly
75 capture a WIM image using the new (slower but better) LZX compressor.
77 The '--compress-slow' option still exists to `wimlib-imagex optimize',
78 but its new behavior is to tweak the new LZX compressor even more to
79 produce an even better compression ratio at the cost of more time spent
82 `wimlib-imagex optimize' now supports the '--compress=TYPE' option,
83 which recompresses the WIM file using the specified compression TYPE.
84 The new library API function used for this is
85 wimlib_set_output_compression_type().
87 Added the wimlib_get_xml_data() function to allow library clients to
88 easily retrieve the raw XML data from a WIM file if needed.
90 Fixed a bug that could cause an error code to be incorrectly returned
91 when writing XML data containing a <WINDOWS> element.
93 Mounted WIM images will now correctly show the default file stream even
94 if appears in the alternate data stream entries of the corresponding WIM
98 Added a new experimental LZX compressor which can be enabled by passing
99 '--compress-slow' to `wimlib-imagex capture' or `wimlib-imagex
100 optimize'. (The latter is only applicable if the WIM is already
101 LZX-compressed and the '--recompress' option is also given.) The
102 experimental compressor is much slower but compresses the data slightly
103 more --- currently usually to within a fraction of a percent of the
104 results from WIMGAPI/ImageX.
106 A workaround has been added for compatibility with versions of WinPE
107 that interpret alternate data stream entries in the boot WIM
110 An alignment bug that caused a crash in the LZX decompressor on some
113 wimlib now attempts to clear the WIM_HDR_FLAG_WRITE_IN_PROGRESS flag in
114 the WIM header when restoring the previous state of a WIM it failed to
117 Added a workaround to avoid an access denied error on Windows when
118 replacing a WIM file that another process has opened.
121 wimlib can now open WinPE WIMs from WAIK v2.1, which had a quirk that
122 needed to be handled.
124 A bug in the interpretation of negative IMAGE indices in the
125 --update-of=[WIMFILE:]IMAGE option to `wimlib-imagex capture' and
126 `wimlib-imagex append' has been fixed.
128 A workaround has been added to successfully apply security descriptors
129 with empty DACLs when the NTFS-3g apply mode is being used with NTFS-3g
130 2013.1.13 or earlier.
132 `wimlib-imagex capture' can now accept the '--delta-from' option
136 Added support for "pipable" WIMs. Pipable WIMs allow capturing images
137 to standard output and applying images from standard input, but they are
138 not compatible with Microsoft's software and are not created by default.
139 See the documentation for --pipable flag of `wimlib-imagex capture' for
142 To better support incremental backups, added support for declaring an
143 image as a modified form of another image. See the documentation for
144 the '--update-of' option of `wimlib-imagex append' and `wimlib-imagex
147 Added supported for "delta" WIMs. See the documentation for the
148 '--delta-from' option of `wimlib-imagex capture'.
150 The library support for managing split WIMs has been changed to support
151 other arrangements, such as delta WIMs, and be easier to use. This
152 change is visible in `wimlib-imagex', which also can now accept the
153 '--ref' option multiple times, and also now supports "delta" WIMs as
156 wimlib now preserves WIM integrity tables by default, even if
157 WIMLIB_WRITE_FLAG_CHECK_INTEGRITY is not specified. This changes the
158 behavior of `wimlib-imagex' whenever the WIM being operated on contains
159 an integrity table and the '--check' option is not specified.
161 `wimlib-imagex capture' now creates LZX-compressed WIMs by default
162 (when --compress is not specified). This provides the best compression
163 ratio by default, which is usually what is desired, at a cost of some
166 `wimlib-imagex' now supports being invoked as wimCOMMAND, where COMMAND
167 is the command as in `wimlib-imagex COMMAND'; for example, it can be
168 invoked as `wimapply' as an alternative to `wimlib-imagex apply'. The
169 appropriate hard links are created in UNIX installations of
170 `wimlib-imagex', while for the Windows distribution of `wimlib-imagex',
171 batch files that emulate this behavior are generated.
173 Security descriptors are now extracted correctly on Windows.
175 Fixed archiving DOS names in NTFS-3g capture mode.
177 The extraction code has been rewritten and it will now be easier to
178 support new features on all supported backends (currently Win32, UNIX,
179 and NTFS-3g). For example, hard-linked extraction mode (--hardlink) is
180 now supported on all backends, not just UNIX.
182 `mkwinpeimg' now supports grabbing files from the WAIK supplement rather
183 than the WAIK itself.
185 wimlib_global_init() now, by default, attempts to acquire additional
186 privileges on Windows, so library clients need not do this.
188 This update bumps the shared library version number up to 9, since it is
189 not binary compatibible with previous releases.
192 Fixed bug in `wimlib-imagex export' that made it impossible to export an
193 image from a WIM that is readonly at the filesystem level.
195 Return error code rather than segfaulting when trying to list files from
196 a non-first part of a split WIM.
198 Joining a WIM will now preserve the RP_FIX and READONLY flags.
201 On Windows, paths given to wimlib-imagex are now treated case
204 Improved behavior regarding invalid filenames; in particular, on
205 Windows, wimlib-imagex will, when extracting, now omit (with an option
206 to override this default) filenames differing only in case, or filenames
207 containing characters not valid on Windows.
209 On Windows, wimlib now supports capturing and extracting long paths
210 (longer than the so-called MAX_PATH).
212 On Windows, `wimlib-imagex update' now acquires proper privileges when
213 running as an Administrator.
215 `wimlib-imagex update' will now complain if no image is specified when
216 trying to update a multi-image WIM.
218 `wimlib-imagex update' now supports specifying a single update command
219 directly on the command line using the --command option.
221 wimlib-imagex will now choose different units for progress messages,
222 depending on the amount of data that needs to be processed.
224 `wimlib-imagex append' will now generate a unique WIM image name if no
225 name is specified and the defaulted name already exists in the WIM.
227 wimlib now allows you to create unnamed WIM images, which can then only
228 be referred to by index.
230 wimlib now allows you to explicitly declare you want write access to a
231 WIM by providing the WIMLIB_OPEN_FLAG_WRITE_ACCESS flag to
234 wimlib now respects the WIM_HDR_FLAG_READONLY flag when set in the WIM
237 Progress callbacks have been added to wimlib's wimlib_update_image()
240 Added wimlib_get_wim_info(), wimlib_set_wim_info(),
241 wimlib_iterate_dir_tree(), and wimlib_iterate_lookup_table() functions
244 NTFS-3g capture now only warns about two conditions previously treated
247 Fixed a couple issues with using wimlib-imagex on UDF filesystems on
250 wimlib now correctly detects and returns an error when reading a WIM
251 image with a cyclic directory structure. (Fun fact: such a WIM will
252 crash Microsoft's software.)
255 Added new "extract" and "update" subcommands to wimlib-imagex, along
256 with associated APIs in the library. These commands are intended mainly
257 for Windows use but can be used on UNIX as well.
259 Many documentation improvements.
261 Fixed a bug in the Windows build where relative symbolic links were not
262 captured in reparse-point fixup mode.
264 Fixed a bug in the Windows build where file handles were left open to
265 the WIM file, causing `wimlib_imagex optimize' to fail in some cases.
267 Fixed a bug in the Windows build of wimlib-imagex where globbing
268 split-WIM parts could cause the program to crash.
270 Fixed a bug where the creation time of WIM images would be shown instead
271 of the last modification time.
273 With the Windows build it is now possible to restore a WIM containing
274 symbolic links as a non-Administrator; however you will receive warnings
275 about not being able to extract the symbolic links.
278 Capturing a WIM image should now be significantly faster in most cases
279 due to improved use of the operating system's cache and avoiding reading
280 files twice whenever possible.
282 The Windows build should now work on Windows XP.
284 The Windows build now supports capturing and restoring hidden,
285 compressed, sparse, and encrypted files.
287 The Windows build now supports capturing and applying WIM images from
288 filesystems other than NTFS (with some reduced functionality).
290 The Windows build now extracts short names correctly.
292 Added support for "reparse-point" fixups (i.e. fixing up of symbolic
293 links). See docs for --rpfix and --norpfix flags of `wimlib-imagex
294 capture' and `wimlib-imagex apply'.
296 The performance of splitting and joining WIMs should be slightly
299 The LZX and XPRESS compression and decompression functions are now
300 exported from the library.
303 Improvements and bugfixes for the Windows build.
305 Added --strict-acls options.
307 Fixed the way that wimlib determines the order of images in the WIM.
310 Since wimlib can now be used on Windows, wimlib's implementation of
311 ImageX has been renamed to wimlib-imagex to avoid confusion with
312 Microsoft's implementation of ImageX, which would have the same file
313 name ("imagex.exe"). If you really don't like this you can pass the
314 --with-imagex-progname option to `configure' to choose a different name,
315 or even simply rename the binary yourself (but the former way will
316 configure the man pages to use the chosen name).
318 Various bugs fixed in the Windows build. Mainly to do with capturing
319 and restoring alternate data streams correctly in weird cases, and
320 requesting the correct privileges when opening files. Also added the
321 --noacls options to wimlib-imagex capture, append, and apply.
323 Windows build again: FindFirstStreamW() and FindNextStreamW() are now
324 dynamically loaded, so this may make the library compatible with Windows
325 XP (however, there may still be other problems).
328 Added experimental support for native Windows builds. Binaries can be
329 downloaded from the SourceForge page.
331 --source-list option added to `imagex capture' and `imagex append'.
333 Better support for different character encodings.
336 Storing UNIX file owners, groups, and modes in WIM images is now
337 possible using `imagex capture' with the --unix-data flag.
339 Minor bug fixes and documentation fixes.
342 NTFS capture: Fixed capturing duplicate reparse points.
344 NTFS capture: Capture first unnamed stream if there are more than one
345 (print warning instead of error).
347 Allow multiple test cases to execute concurrently (e.g. make -j2 check).
350 Added --arch switch to mkwinpeimg script to support getting AMD64 WinPE
353 Update to work with ntfs-3g version 2013.1.13.
356 Fixed truncating file to shorter but non-zero length on read-write
359 Various code cleanups and minor documentation fixes.
362 LZX and XPRESS decompression have received some additional optimizations
363 and should now be even faster. (Although, they were already pretty
364 fast--- much faster than typical I/O speeds.)
366 Fixed a bug introduced in v1.2.1 that would cause a directory tree
367 containing hard links to be captured incorrectly in some cases.
370 By default, unmounting a read-write mounted WIM with 'imagex unmount
371 --commit' will now change the WIM in-place without needing to write the
372 entire WIM again. Use 'imagex unmount --commit --rebuild' to get the
375 'imagex unmount' no longer has a hard-coded limit of 10 minutes to wait
376 for a response from the daemon servicing the mounted WIM. Instead,
377 every second 'imagex unmount' will check if the daemon is still alive,
378 and keep waiting if so, otherwise terminate with an error.
380 'imagex unmount --commit' on a read-write mounted WIM will now print
381 progress information regarding the writing of new or modified streams
382 the WIM, just like when capturing or appending a WIM.
384 A small change has been made to XPRESS compression and it should improve
385 the compression ratio slightly.
387 A change was made that may improve performance slightly when applying a
388 WIM image to a NTFS volume.
390 Microsoft has managed to introduce even more bugs into their software,
391 and now the WIMs for Windows 8 have incorrect (too low) reference counts
392 for some streams. This is unsafe because such streams can be removed
393 when they are in actuality still referenced in the WIM (perhaps by a
394 different image). wimlib will now work around this problem by fixing
395 the stream reference counts. This is only done when wimlib_delete_image() is
396 called ('imagex delete') or when wimlib_mount_image() is called with
397 WIMLIB_MOUNT_FLAG_READWRITE ('imagex mountrw'). Please note that this
398 requires reading the metadata for all images in the WIM, so this will
399 make these operations noticably slower on WIMs with multiple images.
401 Various other bugfixes.
404 Appending images to a WIM is now be done by default without re-building
405 the whole WIM. Use the --rebuild flag to get the old behavior (which
406 was to re-build the entire WIM when a new image is appended).
408 A new command `imagex optimize' is now available to manually re-build a
409 WIM that has wasted space due to repeated appends.
411 Progress information has been improved, and now arbitrary callback
412 functions can be used to show the progress of a WIM operation.
414 A possible bug with changing the bootable image of a WIM was fixed.
416 Some advisory locking is now done to prevent two processes from
417 modifying a WIM at the same time (but only in some cases). For example,
418 you cannot mount two images from a WIM read-write at the same time.
420 Some functions have been reorganized:
421 * wimlib_mount() renamed to wimlib_mount_image().
422 * wimlib_unmount() renamed to wimlib_unmount_image().
423 * wimlib_overwrite_xml_and_header() removed as
424 wimlib_overwrite() suffices now.
425 * wimlib_apply_image_to_ntfs_volume() removed as
426 wimlib_extract_image() suffices now.
427 * wimlib_add_image_from_ntfs_volume() removed as
428 * wimlib_add_image() suffices now.
430 Previously, the soname of libwim.so has been 0.0.0, despite many
431 interface changes. The soname is now updated to 1.0.0 and will now be
432 updated each release.
435 Resources will now be compressed using multiple threads by default.
436 (This applies to `imagex capture', `imagex append', and `imagex
439 Some performance improvements in mounted WIMs.
441 More progress information is shown when capturing a WIM.
444 Lots of minor fixes, code cleanups, and some documentation updates.
445 Nothing in particular is really noteworthy.
448 LZX and XPRESS compression improvements.
450 Fixed calculation of Directory Count, File Count, Total Bytes, and Hard
451 Link Bytes of the WIM.
454 Fixed bug when capturing NTFS file with multiple named data streams.
456 Internally, we are now using inode structures, even though these don't
457 appear literally in the WIM file. This simplifies some of the code
458 (mainly for WIM mounting) and likely fixed a few problems, although it
462 Fixed problem when exporting images from XPRESS to LZX compressed WIM or
466 Enough changes to call it version 1.0.0!
468 Capturing a WIM directly from a NTFS volume, and applying a WIM directly
469 to a NTFS volume, is now supported.
471 Hard links and symbolic links have much improved support. They are
472 supported for WIM capture, WIM application, and mounted WIMs (you can
473 even make them on read-write mounted WIMs).
475 Alternate data streams are now supported on mounted WIMs through an
476 xattr or a Windows-style stream interface. Also they are supported when
477 capturing a WIM from NTFS or applying a WIM to NTFS.
479 Split WIMs are better supported. You may now apply an image directly
480 from a split WIM, mount an image from a split WIM read-only, or export
481 an image from a split WIM.
483 Using a capture configuration file is now supported (but not fully yet).
485 SHA1 message digests are checked in more places, so we can make sure
486 applied and captured data is correct.
488 Man pages have been updated and consolidated.
491 Fixed segfault when unmounting read-only WIM.
494 Support for joining and splitting WIMs.
495 Also, security data is now preserved by default.
498 Can now build with older gcc and system headers, like on CentOS 5.
501 Fixed bug that made it impossible to overwrite files in read-write
505 Write byte-order mark before WIM XML data. (imagex.exe requires this to