1 Only the most important changes more recent than version 0.6 are noted here.
4 Stored files with size exactly 4 GiB (4,294,967,296 bytes) are now
5 decompressed correctly.
7 Fixed a bug in the LZX compressor introduced in v1.5.3. The bug
8 occurred in an unlikely case, and due to validity checks it did not
9 affect successfully created archives.
11 Fixed a minor compatibility issue with the LZMS compressor and
12 decompressor. This is *not* the default compression type and was only
13 introduced in v1.6.0. In the unlikely event that you created a
14 LZMS-compressed WIM with v1.6.0 and a checksum error is reported when
15 applying it with v1.6.1, decompress it with v1.6.0 then compress it with
18 Memory usage for LZMS and LZX compression has been decreased.
20 wimextract now allows wildcard characters in paths specified on the
21 command line. Also, the '--strict-wildcards' option has been removed
22 and replaced with the inverse option '--nullglob'. See the
23 documentation for wimextract for more details and changes.
25 The wimlib_extract_files() function is now considered deprecated in
26 favor of wimlib_extract_paths().
28 Fixed more permissions problems when extracting files on Windows.
30 A new '--no-attributes' option has been added to wimapply and
31 wimextract. The library flag is WIMLIB_EXTRACT_FLAG_NO_ATTRIBUTES.
33 The default chunk size is now set correctly when changing the
34 compression type of a WIM, for example with 'wimoptimize'.
36 The '--metadata' option to wiminfo has been replaced with the
37 '--detailed' option to wimdir.
39 In relevant wimlib-imagex commands, '--solid' may now be used as an
40 alias for '--pack-streams'.
43 Support for extracting and updating the new version 3584 WIMs has been
44 added. These WIMs typically pack many streams ("files") together into a
45 single compressed resource, thereby saving space. This degrades the
46 performance of random access (such as that which occurs on a mounted
47 image), but optimizations have been implemented for extraction. These
48 new WIM files also typically use a new compression format (LZMS), which
49 is similar to LZMA and can offer a better compression ratio than LZX.
50 These new WIM files can be created using `wimcapture' with
51 the '--compress=lzms --pack-streams' options. Note: this new WIM format
52 is used by the Windows 8 web downloader, but important segments of the
53 raw '.esd' files are encrypted, so wimlib will not be able to extract
54 such files until they are first decrypted.
56 wimlib now supports extracting files and directories from a WIM image
57 based on a "listfile" that itself contains the list of paths to extract.
58 For `wimextract', the syntax is to specify @LISTFILE instead of a PATH,
59 and for the library itself, the new APIs are wimlib_extract_pathlist()
60 and wimlib_extract_paths(). Path globs containing wildcard characters
63 For searching WIM files, wimlib now has configurable case sensitivity.
64 The default on Windows is still case-insensitive and the default on
65 UNIX-like systems is still case-sensitive, but this can be overridden
66 on either platform through flags to wimlib_global_init(). For
67 `wimlib-imagex', the environmental variable WIMLIB_IMAGEX_IGNORE_CASE
68 can be set to 1 or 0 for case-insensitive or case-sensitive behavior,
71 Support for compression chunk sizes greater than the default of 32768
72 bytes has been added. A larger chunk size typically results in a better
73 compression ratio. However, the MS implementation is seemingly not
74 compatible with all chunk sizes, especially for LZX compression, so the
75 defaults remain unchanged, with the exception of the new LZMS-compressed
76 WIMs, which use a larger chunk size by default.
78 The compression/decompression API exported by wimlib has been changed.
79 Now one set of functions handles all supported compression formats.
81 `wimcapture' and `wimappend' will now display the progress of scanning
82 the directory tree to capture, in addition to the progress of writing
83 data to the WIM. The '--verbose' option no longer does anything. The
84 library API change for this is the addition of several members to
85 `struct wimlib_progress_info_scan' available to progress callbacks.
87 `mkwinpeimg' now correctly handles the '--start-script' option when the
88 start script is not in the working directory.
90 Sequential extraction, previously requested by using
91 WIMLIB_EXTRACT_FLAG_SEQUENTIAL, is now the default.
92 WIMLIB_EXTRACT_FLAG_FILE_ORDER can be used to get the old default
93 behavior (extract in file order).
96 The new LZX compressor added in v1.5.2 has been improved and is now
97 enabled by default, except when `wimcapture' or `wimappend' is run
98 *without* the '--compress' option, in which case the faster LZX
99 compressor is used (the same as before). This behavior is reasonably
100 consistent with ImageX which actually uses "fast" (XPRESS) compression
101 by default. In those cases, use '--compress=maximum' to explicitly
102 capture a WIM image using the new (slower but better) LZX compressor.
104 The '--compress-slow' option still exists to `wimlib-imagex optimize',
105 but its new behavior is to tweak the new LZX compressor even more to
106 produce an even better compression ratio at the cost of more time spent
109 `wimlib-imagex optimize' now supports the '--compress=TYPE' option,
110 which recompresses the WIM file using the specified compression TYPE.
111 The new library API function used for this is
112 wimlib_set_output_compression_type().
114 Added the wimlib_get_xml_data() function to allow library clients to
115 easily retrieve the raw XML data from a WIM file if needed.
117 Fixed a bug that could cause an error code to be incorrectly returned
118 when writing XML data containing a <WINDOWS> element.
120 Mounted WIM images will now correctly show the default file stream even
121 if appears in the alternate data stream entries of the corresponding WIM
125 Added a new experimental LZX compressor which can be enabled by passing
126 '--compress-slow' to `wimlib-imagex capture' or `wimlib-imagex
127 optimize'. (The latter is only applicable if the WIM is already
128 LZX-compressed and the '--recompress' option is also given.) The
129 experimental compressor is much slower but compresses the data slightly
130 more --- currently usually to within a fraction of a percent of the
131 results from WIMGAPI/ImageX.
133 A workaround has been added for compatibility with versions of WinPE
134 that interpret alternate data stream entries in the boot WIM
137 An alignment bug that caused a crash in the LZX decompressor on some
140 wimlib now attempts to clear the WIM_HDR_FLAG_WRITE_IN_PROGRESS flag in
141 the WIM header when restoring the previous state of a WIM it failed to
144 Added a workaround to avoid an access denied error on Windows when
145 replacing a WIM file that another process has opened.
148 wimlib can now open WinPE WIMs from WAIK v2.1, which had a quirk that
149 needed to be handled.
151 A bug in the interpretation of negative IMAGE indices in the
152 --update-of=[WIMFILE:]IMAGE option to `wimlib-imagex capture' and
153 `wimlib-imagex append' has been fixed.
155 A workaround has been added to successfully apply security descriptors
156 with empty DACLs when the NTFS-3g apply mode is being used with NTFS-3g
157 2013.1.13 or earlier.
159 `wimlib-imagex capture' can now accept the '--delta-from' option
163 Added support for "pipable" WIMs. Pipable WIMs allow capturing images
164 to standard output and applying images from standard input, but they are
165 not compatible with Microsoft's software and are not created by default.
166 See the documentation for --pipable flag of `wimlib-imagex capture' for
169 To better support incremental backups, added support for declaring an
170 image as a modified form of another image. See the documentation for
171 the '--update-of' option of `wimlib-imagex append' and `wimlib-imagex
174 Added supported for "delta" WIMs. See the documentation for the
175 '--delta-from' option of `wimlib-imagex capture'.
177 The library support for managing split WIMs has been changed to support
178 other arrangements, such as delta WIMs, and be easier to use. This
179 change is visible in `wimlib-imagex', which also can now accept the
180 '--ref' option multiple times, and also now supports "delta" WIMs as
183 wimlib now preserves WIM integrity tables by default, even if
184 WIMLIB_WRITE_FLAG_CHECK_INTEGRITY is not specified. This changes the
185 behavior of `wimlib-imagex' whenever the WIM being operated on contains
186 an integrity table and the '--check' option is not specified.
188 `wimlib-imagex capture' now creates LZX-compressed WIMs by default
189 (when --compress is not specified). This provides the best compression
190 ratio by default, which is usually what is desired, at a cost of some
193 `wimlib-imagex' now supports being invoked as wimCOMMAND, where COMMAND
194 is the command as in `wimlib-imagex COMMAND'; for example, it can be
195 invoked as `wimapply' as an alternative to `wimlib-imagex apply'. The
196 appropriate hard links are created in UNIX installations of
197 `wimlib-imagex', while for the Windows distribution of `wimlib-imagex',
198 batch files that emulate this behavior are generated.
200 Security descriptors are now extracted correctly on Windows.
202 Fixed archiving DOS names in NTFS-3g capture mode.
204 The extraction code has been rewritten and it will now be easier to
205 support new features on all supported backends (currently Win32, UNIX,
206 and NTFS-3g). For example, hard-linked extraction mode (--hardlink) is
207 now supported on all backends, not just UNIX.
209 `mkwinpeimg' now supports grabbing files from the WAIK supplement rather
210 than the WAIK itself.
212 wimlib_global_init() now, by default, attempts to acquire additional
213 privileges on Windows, so library clients need not do this.
215 This update bumps the shared library version number up to 9, since it is
216 not binary compatibible with previous releases.
219 Fixed bug in `wimlib-imagex export' that made it impossible to export an
220 image from a WIM that is readonly at the filesystem level.
222 Return error code rather than segfaulting when trying to list files from
223 a non-first part of a split WIM.
225 Joining a WIM will now preserve the RP_FIX and READONLY flags.
228 On Windows, paths given to wimlib-imagex are now treated case
231 Improved behavior regarding invalid filenames; in particular, on
232 Windows, wimlib-imagex will, when extracting, now omit (with an option
233 to override this default) filenames differing only in case, or filenames
234 containing characters not valid on Windows.
236 On Windows, wimlib now supports capturing and extracting long paths
237 (longer than the so-called MAX_PATH).
239 On Windows, `wimlib-imagex update' now acquires proper privileges when
240 running as an Administrator.
242 `wimlib-imagex update' will now complain if no image is specified when
243 trying to update a multi-image WIM.
245 `wimlib-imagex update' now supports specifying a single update command
246 directly on the command line using the --command option.
248 wimlib-imagex will now choose different units for progress messages,
249 depending on the amount of data that needs to be processed.
251 `wimlib-imagex append' will now generate a unique WIM image name if no
252 name is specified and the defaulted name already exists in the WIM.
254 wimlib now allows you to create unnamed WIM images, which can then only
255 be referred to by index.
257 wimlib now allows you to explicitly declare you want write access to a
258 WIM by providing the WIMLIB_OPEN_FLAG_WRITE_ACCESS flag to
261 wimlib now respects the WIM_HDR_FLAG_READONLY flag when set in the WIM
264 Progress callbacks have been added to wimlib's wimlib_update_image()
267 Added wimlib_get_wim_info(), wimlib_set_wim_info(),
268 wimlib_iterate_dir_tree(), and wimlib_iterate_lookup_table() functions
271 NTFS-3g capture now only warns about two conditions previously treated
274 Fixed a couple issues with using wimlib-imagex on UDF filesystems on
277 wimlib now correctly detects and returns an error when reading a WIM
278 image with a cyclic directory structure. (Fun fact: such a WIM will
279 crash Microsoft's software.)
282 Added new "extract" and "update" subcommands to wimlib-imagex, along
283 with associated APIs in the library. These commands are intended mainly
284 for Windows use but can be used on UNIX as well.
286 Many documentation improvements.
288 Fixed a bug in the Windows build where relative symbolic links were not
289 captured in reparse-point fixup mode.
291 Fixed a bug in the Windows build where file handles were left open to
292 the WIM file, causing `wimlib_imagex optimize' to fail in some cases.
294 Fixed a bug in the Windows build of wimlib-imagex where globbing
295 split-WIM parts could cause the program to crash.
297 Fixed a bug where the creation time of WIM images would be shown instead
298 of the last modification time.
300 With the Windows build it is now possible to restore a WIM containing
301 symbolic links as a non-Administrator; however you will receive warnings
302 about not being able to extract the symbolic links.
305 Capturing a WIM image should now be significantly faster in most cases
306 due to improved use of the operating system's cache and avoiding reading
307 files twice whenever possible.
309 The Windows build should now work on Windows XP.
311 The Windows build now supports capturing and restoring hidden,
312 compressed, sparse, and encrypted files.
314 The Windows build now supports capturing and applying WIM images from
315 filesystems other than NTFS (with some reduced functionality).
317 The Windows build now extracts short names correctly.
319 Added support for "reparse-point" fixups (i.e. fixing up of symbolic
320 links). See docs for --rpfix and --norpfix flags of `wimlib-imagex
321 capture' and `wimlib-imagex apply'.
323 The performance of splitting and joining WIMs should be slightly
326 The LZX and XPRESS compression and decompression functions are now
327 exported from the library.
330 Improvements and bugfixes for the Windows build.
332 Added --strict-acls options.
334 Fixed the way that wimlib determines the order of images in the WIM.
337 Since wimlib can now be used on Windows, wimlib's implementation of
338 ImageX has been renamed to wimlib-imagex to avoid confusion with
339 Microsoft's implementation of ImageX, which would have the same file
340 name ("imagex.exe"). If you really don't like this you can pass the
341 --with-imagex-progname option to `configure' to choose a different name,
342 or even simply rename the binary yourself (but the former way will
343 configure the man pages to use the chosen name).
345 Various bugs fixed in the Windows build. Mainly to do with capturing
346 and restoring alternate data streams correctly in weird cases, and
347 requesting the correct privileges when opening files. Also added the
348 --noacls options to wimlib-imagex capture, append, and apply.
350 Windows build again: FindFirstStreamW() and FindNextStreamW() are now
351 dynamically loaded, so this may make the library compatible with Windows
352 XP (however, there may still be other problems).
355 Added experimental support for native Windows builds. Binaries can be
356 downloaded from the SourceForge page.
358 --source-list option added to `imagex capture' and `imagex append'.
360 Better support for different character encodings.
363 Storing UNIX file owners, groups, and modes in WIM images is now
364 possible using `imagex capture' with the --unix-data flag.
366 Minor bug fixes and documentation fixes.
369 NTFS capture: Fixed capturing duplicate reparse points.
371 NTFS capture: Capture first unnamed stream if there are more than one
372 (print warning instead of error).
374 Allow multiple test cases to execute concurrently (e.g. make -j2 check).
377 Added --arch switch to mkwinpeimg script to support getting AMD64 WinPE
380 Update to work with ntfs-3g version 2013.1.13.
383 Fixed truncating file to shorter but non-zero length on read-write
386 Various code cleanups and minor documentation fixes.
389 LZX and XPRESS decompression have received some additional optimizations
390 and should now be even faster. (Although, they were already pretty
391 fast--- much faster than typical I/O speeds.)
393 Fixed a bug introduced in v1.2.1 that would cause a directory tree
394 containing hard links to be captured incorrectly in some cases.
397 By default, unmounting a read-write mounted WIM with 'imagex unmount
398 --commit' will now change the WIM in-place without needing to write the
399 entire WIM again. Use 'imagex unmount --commit --rebuild' to get the
402 'imagex unmount' no longer has a hard-coded limit of 10 minutes to wait
403 for a response from the daemon servicing the mounted WIM. Instead,
404 every second 'imagex unmount' will check if the daemon is still alive,
405 and keep waiting if so, otherwise terminate with an error.
407 'imagex unmount --commit' on a read-write mounted WIM will now print
408 progress information regarding the writing of new or modified streams
409 the WIM, just like when capturing or appending a WIM.
411 A small change has been made to XPRESS compression and it should improve
412 the compression ratio slightly.
414 A change was made that may improve performance slightly when applying a
415 WIM image to a NTFS volume.
417 Microsoft has managed to introduce even more bugs into their software,
418 and now the WIMs for Windows 8 have incorrect (too low) reference counts
419 for some streams. This is unsafe because such streams can be removed
420 when they are in actuality still referenced in the WIM (perhaps by a
421 different image). wimlib will now work around this problem by fixing
422 the stream reference counts. This is only done when wimlib_delete_image() is
423 called ('imagex delete') or when wimlib_mount_image() is called with
424 WIMLIB_MOUNT_FLAG_READWRITE ('imagex mountrw'). Please note that this
425 requires reading the metadata for all images in the WIM, so this will
426 make these operations noticably slower on WIMs with multiple images.
428 Various other bugfixes.
431 Appending images to a WIM is now be done by default without re-building
432 the whole WIM. Use the --rebuild flag to get the old behavior (which
433 was to re-build the entire WIM when a new image is appended).
435 A new command `imagex optimize' is now available to manually re-build a
436 WIM that has wasted space due to repeated appends.
438 Progress information has been improved, and now arbitrary callback
439 functions can be used to show the progress of a WIM operation.
441 A possible bug with changing the bootable image of a WIM was fixed.
443 Some advisory locking is now done to prevent two processes from
444 modifying a WIM at the same time (but only in some cases). For example,
445 you cannot mount two images from a WIM read-write at the same time.
447 Some functions have been reorganized:
448 * wimlib_mount() renamed to wimlib_mount_image().
449 * wimlib_unmount() renamed to wimlib_unmount_image().
450 * wimlib_overwrite_xml_and_header() removed as
451 wimlib_overwrite() suffices now.
452 * wimlib_apply_image_to_ntfs_volume() removed as
453 wimlib_extract_image() suffices now.
454 * wimlib_add_image_from_ntfs_volume() removed as
455 * wimlib_add_image() suffices now.
457 Previously, the soname of libwim.so has been 0.0.0, despite many
458 interface changes. The soname is now updated to 1.0.0 and will now be
459 updated each release.
462 Resources will now be compressed using multiple threads by default.
463 (This applies to `imagex capture', `imagex append', and `imagex
466 Some performance improvements in mounted WIMs.
468 More progress information is shown when capturing a WIM.
471 Lots of minor fixes, code cleanups, and some documentation updates.
472 Nothing in particular is really noteworthy.
475 LZX and XPRESS compression improvements.
477 Fixed calculation of Directory Count, File Count, Total Bytes, and Hard
478 Link Bytes of the WIM.
481 Fixed bug when capturing NTFS file with multiple named data streams.
483 Internally, we are now using inode structures, even though these don't
484 appear literally in the WIM file. This simplifies some of the code
485 (mainly for WIM mounting) and likely fixed a few problems, although it
489 Fixed problem when exporting images from XPRESS to LZX compressed WIM or
493 Enough changes to call it version 1.0.0!
495 Capturing a WIM directly from a NTFS volume, and applying a WIM directly
496 to a NTFS volume, is now supported.
498 Hard links and symbolic links have much improved support. They are
499 supported for WIM capture, WIM application, and mounted WIMs (you can
500 even make them on read-write mounted WIMs).
502 Alternate data streams are now supported on mounted WIMs through an
503 xattr or a Windows-style stream interface. Also they are supported when
504 capturing a WIM from NTFS or applying a WIM to NTFS.
506 Split WIMs are better supported. You may now apply an image directly
507 from a split WIM, mount an image from a split WIM read-only, or export
508 an image from a split WIM.
510 Using a capture configuration file is now supported (but not fully yet).
512 SHA1 message digests are checked in more places, so we can make sure
513 applied and captured data is correct.
515 Man pages have been updated and consolidated.
518 Fixed segfault when unmounting read-only WIM.
521 Support for joining and splitting WIMs.
522 Also, security data is now preserved by default.
525 Can now build with older gcc and system headers, like on CentOS 5.
528 Fixed bug that made it impossible to overwrite files in read-write
532 Write byte-order mark before WIM XML data. (imagex.exe requires this to