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 minor compatibility issue with the LZMS compressor and
8 decompressor. This is *not* the default compression type and was only
9 introduced in v1.6.0. In the unlikely event that you created a
10 LZMS-compressed WIM with v1.6.0 and a checksum error is reported when
11 applying it with v1.6.1, decompress it with v1.6.0 then compress it with
14 Paths passed to wimlib_extract_paths() and wimlib_iterate_dir_tree() may
15 now use either forwards or backwards slashes, as documented.
17 Fixed a potential stack overflow when extracting solid archives
18 containing more than about 100000 files.
20 Memory usage for LZMS and LZX compression has been decreased.
22 For wimcapture, wimoptimize, and wimexport, '--solid' may now be used as
23 an alias for '--pack-streams'.
26 Support for extracting and updating the new version 3584 WIMs has been
27 added. These WIMs typically pack many streams ("files") together into a
28 single compressed resource, thereby saving space. This degrades the
29 performance of random access (such as that which occurs on a mounted
30 image), but optimizations have been implemented for extraction. These
31 new WIM files also typically use a new compression format (LZMS), which
32 is similar to LZMA and can offer a better compression ratio than LZX.
33 These new WIM files can be created using `wimcapture' with
34 the '--compress=lzms --pack-streams' options. Note: this new WIM format
35 is used by the Windows 8 web downloader, but important segments of the
36 raw '.esd' files are encrypted, so wimlib will not be able to extract
37 such files until they are first decrypted.
39 wimlib now supports extracting files and directories from a WIM image
40 based on a "listfile" that itself contains the list of paths to extract.
41 For `wimextract', the syntax is to specify @LISTFILE instead of a PATH,
42 and for the library itself, the new APIs are wimlib_extract_pathlist()
43 and wimlib_extract_paths(). Path globs containing wildcard characters
46 For searching WIM files, wimlib now has configurable case sensitivity.
47 The default on Windows is still case-insensitive and the default on
48 UNIX-like systems is still case-sensitive, but this can be overridden
49 on either platform through flags to wimlib_global_init(). For
50 `wimlib-imagex', the environmental variable WIMLIB_IMAGEX_IGNORE_CASE
51 can be set to 1 or 0 for case-insensitive or case-sensitive behavior,
54 Support for compression chunk sizes greater than the default of 32768
55 bytes has been added. A larger chunk size typically results in a better
56 compression ratio. However, the MS implementation is seemingly not
57 compatible with all chunk sizes, especially for LZX compression, so the
58 defaults remain unchanged, with the exception of the new LZMS-compressed
59 WIMs, which use a larger chunk size by default.
61 The compression/decompression API exported by wimlib has been changed.
62 Now one set of functions handles all supported compression formats.
64 `wimcapture' and `wimappend' will now display the progress of scanning
65 the directory tree to capture, in addition to the progress of writing
66 data to the WIM. The '--verbose' option no longer does anything. The
67 library API change for this is the addition of several members to
68 `struct wimlib_progress_info_scan' available to progress callbacks.
70 `mkwinpeimg' now correctly handles the '--start-script' option when the
71 start script is not in the working directory.
73 Sequential extraction, previously requested by using
74 WIMLIB_EXTRACT_FLAG_SEQUENTIAL, is now the default.
75 WIMLIB_EXTRACT_FLAG_FILE_ORDER can be used to get the old default
76 behavior (extract in file order).
79 The new LZX compressor added in v1.5.2 has been improved and is now
80 enabled by default, except when `wimcapture' or `wimappend' is run
81 *without* the '--compress' option, in which case the faster LZX
82 compressor is used (the same as before). This behavior is reasonably
83 consistent with ImageX which actually uses "fast" (XPRESS) compression
84 by default. In those cases, use '--compress=maximum' to explicitly
85 capture a WIM image using the new (slower but better) LZX compressor.
87 The '--compress-slow' option still exists to `wimlib-imagex optimize',
88 but its new behavior is to tweak the new LZX compressor even more to
89 produce an even better compression ratio at the cost of more time spent
92 `wimlib-imagex optimize' now supports the '--compress=TYPE' option,
93 which recompresses the WIM file using the specified compression TYPE.
94 The new library API function used for this is
95 wimlib_set_output_compression_type().
97 Added the wimlib_get_xml_data() function to allow library clients to
98 easily retrieve the raw XML data from a WIM file if needed.
100 Fixed a bug that could cause an error code to be incorrectly returned
101 when writing XML data containing a <WINDOWS> element.
103 Mounted WIM images will now correctly show the default file stream even
104 if appears in the alternate data stream entries of the corresponding WIM
108 Added a new experimental LZX compressor which can be enabled by passing
109 '--compress-slow' to `wimlib-imagex capture' or `wimlib-imagex
110 optimize'. (The latter is only applicable if the WIM is already
111 LZX-compressed and the '--recompress' option is also given.) The
112 experimental compressor is much slower but compresses the data slightly
113 more --- currently usually to within a fraction of a percent of the
114 results from WIMGAPI/ImageX.
116 A workaround has been added for compatibility with versions of WinPE
117 that interpret alternate data stream entries in the boot WIM
120 An alignment bug that caused a crash in the LZX decompressor on some
123 wimlib now attempts to clear the WIM_HDR_FLAG_WRITE_IN_PROGRESS flag in
124 the WIM header when restoring the previous state of a WIM it failed to
127 Added a workaround to avoid an access denied error on Windows when
128 replacing a WIM file that another process has opened.
131 wimlib can now open WinPE WIMs from WAIK v2.1, which had a quirk that
132 needed to be handled.
134 A bug in the interpretation of negative IMAGE indices in the
135 --update-of=[WIMFILE:]IMAGE option to `wimlib-imagex capture' and
136 `wimlib-imagex append' has been fixed.
138 A workaround has been added to successfully apply security descriptors
139 with empty DACLs when the NTFS-3g apply mode is being used with NTFS-3g
140 2013.1.13 or earlier.
142 `wimlib-imagex capture' can now accept the '--delta-from' option
146 Added support for "pipable" WIMs. Pipable WIMs allow capturing images
147 to standard output and applying images from standard input, but they are
148 not compatible with Microsoft's software and are not created by default.
149 See the documentation for --pipable flag of `wimlib-imagex capture' for
152 To better support incremental backups, added support for declaring an
153 image as a modified form of another image. See the documentation for
154 the '--update-of' option of `wimlib-imagex append' and `wimlib-imagex
157 Added supported for "delta" WIMs. See the documentation for the
158 '--delta-from' option of `wimlib-imagex capture'.
160 The library support for managing split WIMs has been changed to support
161 other arrangements, such as delta WIMs, and be easier to use. This
162 change is visible in `wimlib-imagex', which also can now accept the
163 '--ref' option multiple times, and also now supports "delta" WIMs as
166 wimlib now preserves WIM integrity tables by default, even if
167 WIMLIB_WRITE_FLAG_CHECK_INTEGRITY is not specified. This changes the
168 behavior of `wimlib-imagex' whenever the WIM being operated on contains
169 an integrity table and the '--check' option is not specified.
171 `wimlib-imagex capture' now creates LZX-compressed WIMs by default
172 (when --compress is not specified). This provides the best compression
173 ratio by default, which is usually what is desired, at a cost of some
176 `wimlib-imagex' now supports being invoked as wimCOMMAND, where COMMAND
177 is the command as in `wimlib-imagex COMMAND'; for example, it can be
178 invoked as `wimapply' as an alternative to `wimlib-imagex apply'. The
179 appropriate hard links are created in UNIX installations of
180 `wimlib-imagex', while for the Windows distribution of `wimlib-imagex',
181 batch files that emulate this behavior are generated.
183 Security descriptors are now extracted correctly on Windows.
185 Fixed archiving DOS names in NTFS-3g capture mode.
187 The extraction code has been rewritten and it will now be easier to
188 support new features on all supported backends (currently Win32, UNIX,
189 and NTFS-3g). For example, hard-linked extraction mode (--hardlink) is
190 now supported on all backends, not just UNIX.
192 `mkwinpeimg' now supports grabbing files from the WAIK supplement rather
193 than the WAIK itself.
195 wimlib_global_init() now, by default, attempts to acquire additional
196 privileges on Windows, so library clients need not do this.
198 This update bumps the shared library version number up to 9, since it is
199 not binary compatibible with previous releases.
202 Fixed bug in `wimlib-imagex export' that made it impossible to export an
203 image from a WIM that is readonly at the filesystem level.
205 Return error code rather than segfaulting when trying to list files from
206 a non-first part of a split WIM.
208 Joining a WIM will now preserve the RP_FIX and READONLY flags.
211 On Windows, paths given to wimlib-imagex are now treated case
214 Improved behavior regarding invalid filenames; in particular, on
215 Windows, wimlib-imagex will, when extracting, now omit (with an option
216 to override this default) filenames differing only in case, or filenames
217 containing characters not valid on Windows.
219 On Windows, wimlib now supports capturing and extracting long paths
220 (longer than the so-called MAX_PATH).
222 On Windows, `wimlib-imagex update' now acquires proper privileges when
223 running as an Administrator.
225 `wimlib-imagex update' will now complain if no image is specified when
226 trying to update a multi-image WIM.
228 `wimlib-imagex update' now supports specifying a single update command
229 directly on the command line using the --command option.
231 wimlib-imagex will now choose different units for progress messages,
232 depending on the amount of data that needs to be processed.
234 `wimlib-imagex append' will now generate a unique WIM image name if no
235 name is specified and the defaulted name already exists in the WIM.
237 wimlib now allows you to create unnamed WIM images, which can then only
238 be referred to by index.
240 wimlib now allows you to explicitly declare you want write access to a
241 WIM by providing the WIMLIB_OPEN_FLAG_WRITE_ACCESS flag to
244 wimlib now respects the WIM_HDR_FLAG_READONLY flag when set in the WIM
247 Progress callbacks have been added to wimlib's wimlib_update_image()
250 Added wimlib_get_wim_info(), wimlib_set_wim_info(),
251 wimlib_iterate_dir_tree(), and wimlib_iterate_lookup_table() functions
254 NTFS-3g capture now only warns about two conditions previously treated
257 Fixed a couple issues with using wimlib-imagex on UDF filesystems on
260 wimlib now correctly detects and returns an error when reading a WIM
261 image with a cyclic directory structure. (Fun fact: such a WIM will
262 crash Microsoft's software.)
265 Added new "extract" and "update" subcommands to wimlib-imagex, along
266 with associated APIs in the library. These commands are intended mainly
267 for Windows use but can be used on UNIX as well.
269 Many documentation improvements.
271 Fixed a bug in the Windows build where relative symbolic links were not
272 captured in reparse-point fixup mode.
274 Fixed a bug in the Windows build where file handles were left open to
275 the WIM file, causing `wimlib_imagex optimize' to fail in some cases.
277 Fixed a bug in the Windows build of wimlib-imagex where globbing
278 split-WIM parts could cause the program to crash.
280 Fixed a bug where the creation time of WIM images would be shown instead
281 of the last modification time.
283 With the Windows build it is now possible to restore a WIM containing
284 symbolic links as a non-Administrator; however you will receive warnings
285 about not being able to extract the symbolic links.
288 Capturing a WIM image should now be significantly faster in most cases
289 due to improved use of the operating system's cache and avoiding reading
290 files twice whenever possible.
292 The Windows build should now work on Windows XP.
294 The Windows build now supports capturing and restoring hidden,
295 compressed, sparse, and encrypted files.
297 The Windows build now supports capturing and applying WIM images from
298 filesystems other than NTFS (with some reduced functionality).
300 The Windows build now extracts short names correctly.
302 Added support for "reparse-point" fixups (i.e. fixing up of symbolic
303 links). See docs for --rpfix and --norpfix flags of `wimlib-imagex
304 capture' and `wimlib-imagex apply'.
306 The performance of splitting and joining WIMs should be slightly
309 The LZX and XPRESS compression and decompression functions are now
310 exported from the library.
313 Improvements and bugfixes for the Windows build.
315 Added --strict-acls options.
317 Fixed the way that wimlib determines the order of images in the WIM.
320 Since wimlib can now be used on Windows, wimlib's implementation of
321 ImageX has been renamed to wimlib-imagex to avoid confusion with
322 Microsoft's implementation of ImageX, which would have the same file
323 name ("imagex.exe"). If you really don't like this you can pass the
324 --with-imagex-progname option to `configure' to choose a different name,
325 or even simply rename the binary yourself (but the former way will
326 configure the man pages to use the chosen name).
328 Various bugs fixed in the Windows build. Mainly to do with capturing
329 and restoring alternate data streams correctly in weird cases, and
330 requesting the correct privileges when opening files. Also added the
331 --noacls options to wimlib-imagex capture, append, and apply.
333 Windows build again: FindFirstStreamW() and FindNextStreamW() are now
334 dynamically loaded, so this may make the library compatible with Windows
335 XP (however, there may still be other problems).
338 Added experimental support for native Windows builds. Binaries can be
339 downloaded from the SourceForge page.
341 --source-list option added to `imagex capture' and `imagex append'.
343 Better support for different character encodings.
346 Storing UNIX file owners, groups, and modes in WIM images is now
347 possible using `imagex capture' with the --unix-data flag.
349 Minor bug fixes and documentation fixes.
352 NTFS capture: Fixed capturing duplicate reparse points.
354 NTFS capture: Capture first unnamed stream if there are more than one
355 (print warning instead of error).
357 Allow multiple test cases to execute concurrently (e.g. make -j2 check).
360 Added --arch switch to mkwinpeimg script to support getting AMD64 WinPE
363 Update to work with ntfs-3g version 2013.1.13.
366 Fixed truncating file to shorter but non-zero length on read-write
369 Various code cleanups and minor documentation fixes.
372 LZX and XPRESS decompression have received some additional optimizations
373 and should now be even faster. (Although, they were already pretty
374 fast--- much faster than typical I/O speeds.)
376 Fixed a bug introduced in v1.2.1 that would cause a directory tree
377 containing hard links to be captured incorrectly in some cases.
380 By default, unmounting a read-write mounted WIM with 'imagex unmount
381 --commit' will now change the WIM in-place without needing to write the
382 entire WIM again. Use 'imagex unmount --commit --rebuild' to get the
385 'imagex unmount' no longer has a hard-coded limit of 10 minutes to wait
386 for a response from the daemon servicing the mounted WIM. Instead,
387 every second 'imagex unmount' will check if the daemon is still alive,
388 and keep waiting if so, otherwise terminate with an error.
390 'imagex unmount --commit' on a read-write mounted WIM will now print
391 progress information regarding the writing of new or modified streams
392 the WIM, just like when capturing or appending a WIM.
394 A small change has been made to XPRESS compression and it should improve
395 the compression ratio slightly.
397 A change was made that may improve performance slightly when applying a
398 WIM image to a NTFS volume.
400 Microsoft has managed to introduce even more bugs into their software,
401 and now the WIMs for Windows 8 have incorrect (too low) reference counts
402 for some streams. This is unsafe because such streams can be removed
403 when they are in actuality still referenced in the WIM (perhaps by a
404 different image). wimlib will now work around this problem by fixing
405 the stream reference counts. This is only done when wimlib_delete_image() is
406 called ('imagex delete') or when wimlib_mount_image() is called with
407 WIMLIB_MOUNT_FLAG_READWRITE ('imagex mountrw'). Please note that this
408 requires reading the metadata for all images in the WIM, so this will
409 make these operations noticably slower on WIMs with multiple images.
411 Various other bugfixes.
414 Appending images to a WIM is now be done by default without re-building
415 the whole WIM. Use the --rebuild flag to get the old behavior (which
416 was to re-build the entire WIM when a new image is appended).
418 A new command `imagex optimize' is now available to manually re-build a
419 WIM that has wasted space due to repeated appends.
421 Progress information has been improved, and now arbitrary callback
422 functions can be used to show the progress of a WIM operation.
424 A possible bug with changing the bootable image of a WIM was fixed.
426 Some advisory locking is now done to prevent two processes from
427 modifying a WIM at the same time (but only in some cases). For example,
428 you cannot mount two images from a WIM read-write at the same time.
430 Some functions have been reorganized:
431 * wimlib_mount() renamed to wimlib_mount_image().
432 * wimlib_unmount() renamed to wimlib_unmount_image().
433 * wimlib_overwrite_xml_and_header() removed as
434 wimlib_overwrite() suffices now.
435 * wimlib_apply_image_to_ntfs_volume() removed as
436 wimlib_extract_image() suffices now.
437 * wimlib_add_image_from_ntfs_volume() removed as
438 * wimlib_add_image() suffices now.
440 Previously, the soname of libwim.so has been 0.0.0, despite many
441 interface changes. The soname is now updated to 1.0.0 and will now be
442 updated each release.
445 Resources will now be compressed using multiple threads by default.
446 (This applies to `imagex capture', `imagex append', and `imagex
449 Some performance improvements in mounted WIMs.
451 More progress information is shown when capturing a WIM.
454 Lots of minor fixes, code cleanups, and some documentation updates.
455 Nothing in particular is really noteworthy.
458 LZX and XPRESS compression improvements.
460 Fixed calculation of Directory Count, File Count, Total Bytes, and Hard
461 Link Bytes of the WIM.
464 Fixed bug when capturing NTFS file with multiple named data streams.
466 Internally, we are now using inode structures, even though these don't
467 appear literally in the WIM file. This simplifies some of the code
468 (mainly for WIM mounting) and likely fixed a few problems, although it
472 Fixed problem when exporting images from XPRESS to LZX compressed WIM or
476 Enough changes to call it version 1.0.0!
478 Capturing a WIM directly from a NTFS volume, and applying a WIM directly
479 to a NTFS volume, is now supported.
481 Hard links and symbolic links have much improved support. They are
482 supported for WIM capture, WIM application, and mounted WIMs (you can
483 even make them on read-write mounted WIMs).
485 Alternate data streams are now supported on mounted WIMs through an
486 xattr or a Windows-style stream interface. Also they are supported when
487 capturing a WIM from NTFS or applying a WIM to NTFS.
489 Split WIMs are better supported. You may now apply an image directly
490 from a split WIM, mount an image from a split WIM read-only, or export
491 an image from a split WIM.
493 Using a capture configuration file is now supported (but not fully yet).
495 SHA1 message digests are checked in more places, so we can make sure
496 applied and captured data is correct.
498 Man pages have been updated and consolidated.
501 Fixed segfault when unmounting read-only WIM.
504 Support for joining and splitting WIMs.
505 Also, security data is now preserved by default.
508 Can now build with older gcc and system headers, like on CentOS 5.
511 Fixed bug that made it impossible to overwrite files in read-write
515 Write byte-order mark before WIM XML data. (imagex.exe requires this to