1 Only the most important changes more recent than version 0.6 are noted here.
4 'add' commands passed to wimupdate will now replace existing
5 nondirectory files by default. Use the --no-replace option to get the
8 Improved compatibility with version 3584 WIM / ESD files.
10 Improved extraction performance on Windows, especially for ESD files.
12 Added support for "WIMBoot". On any platform, you can now capture a WIM
13 as WIMBoot-compatible. In addition, on Windows, you can now apply a WIM
14 archive in a special mode that causes extracted files to be externally
15 backed by the WIM archive. See the documentation for the new
16 '--wimboot' option to wimcapture and wimapply for more information.
18 WIMs will now retain their GUIDs when rebuilt (e.g. with wimoptimize).
20 The 'mkwinpeimg' script now supports writing the ISO image to standard
23 On Windows, sparse file attributes are no longer set on extracted files.
25 The shared library version has been bumped up; however, there are only a
26 few incompatibilities:
28 - WIMLIB_COMPRESSION_TYPE_XPRESS is now 1 and
29 WIMLIB_COMPRESSION_TYPE_LZX is now 2 (so it's the same as
32 - 'struct wimlib_capture_config' has been removed. The library
33 now takes the path to the configuration file directly. This
34 affects wimlib_add_image(), wimlib_add_image_multisource(),
35 and wimlib_update_image(). However no code changes are
36 necessary if a NULL configuration was being used.
38 - Removed deprecated functions: some (de)compression functions,
39 wimlib_extract_files(), and wimlib_print_metadata().
41 - WIM paths passed to progress functions now have a leading
44 Made some documentation improvements.
47 Case-insensitive comparisons of strings (e.g. filenames) containing
48 UTF-16 codepoints above 32767 are now done correctly.
50 Fixed build failure on Mac OS X.
52 wimunmount now provides the '--new-image' option to cause changes to a
53 read-write mounted image to be committed as a new image rather than as
54 an update of the mounted image. (The corresponding new library flag is
55 WIMLIB_UNMOUNT_FLAG_NEW_IMAGE.)
57 The LZMS ("recovery") compression chunk size, or "dictionary size", may
58 now be up to 1 GiB (1,073,741,824 bytes).
60 The performance of LZX ("maximum") and LZMS ("recovery") compression
61 with large chunk sizes has been slightly improved.
64 Stored files with size exactly 4 GiB (4,294,967,296 bytes) are now
65 decompressed correctly.
67 Fixed a bug in the LZX compressor introduced in v1.5.3. The bug
68 occurred in an unlikely case, and due to validity checks it did not
69 affect successfully created archives.
71 Fixed a minor compatibility issue with the LZMS compressor and
72 decompressor. This is *not* the default compression type and was only
73 introduced in v1.6.0. In the unlikely event that you created an
74 LZMS-compressed WIM with v1.6.0 and a checksum error is reported when
75 applying it with v1.6.1, decompress it with v1.6.0 then compress it with
78 Memory usage for LZMS and LZX compression has been decreased.
80 wimextract now allows wildcard characters in paths specified on the
81 command line. Also, the '--strict-wildcards' option has been removed
82 and replaced with the inverse option '--nullglob'. See the
83 documentation for wimextract for more details and changes.
85 The wimlib_extract_files() function is now considered deprecated in
86 favor of wimlib_extract_paths().
88 Fixed more permissions problems when extracting files on Windows.
90 A new '--no-attributes' option has been added to wimapply and
91 wimextract. The library flag is WIMLIB_EXTRACT_FLAG_NO_ATTRIBUTES.
93 The default chunk size is now set correctly when changing the
94 compression type of a WIM, for example with 'wimoptimize'.
96 The '--metadata' option to wiminfo has been replaced with the
97 '--detailed' option to wimdir.
99 In relevant wimlib-imagex commands, '--solid' may now be used as an
100 alias for '--pack-streams'.
103 Support for extracting and updating the new version 3584 WIMs has been
104 added. These WIMs typically pack many streams ("files") together into a
105 single compressed resource, thereby saving space. This degrades the
106 performance of random access (such as that which occurs on a mounted
107 image), but optimizations have been implemented for extraction. These
108 new WIM files also typically use a new compression format (LZMS), which
109 is similar to LZMA and can offer a better compression ratio than LZX.
110 These new WIM files can be created using `wimcapture' with
111 the '--compress=lzms --pack-streams' options. Note: this new WIM format
112 is used by the Windows 8 web downloader, but important segments of the
113 raw '.esd' files are encrypted, so wimlib will not be able to extract
114 such files until they are first decrypted.
116 wimlib now supports extracting files and directories from a WIM image
117 based on a "listfile" that itself contains the list of paths to extract.
118 For `wimextract', the syntax is to specify @LISTFILE instead of a PATH,
119 and for the library itself, the new APIs are wimlib_extract_pathlist()
120 and wimlib_extract_paths(). Path globs containing wildcard characters
123 For searching WIM files, wimlib now has configurable case sensitivity.
124 The default on Windows is still case-insensitive and the default on
125 UNIX-like systems is still case-sensitive, but this can be overridden
126 on either platform through flags to wimlib_global_init(). For
127 `wimlib-imagex', the environmental variable WIMLIB_IMAGEX_IGNORE_CASE
128 can be set to 1 or 0 for case-insensitive or case-sensitive behavior,
131 Support for compression chunk sizes greater than the default of 32768
132 bytes has been added. A larger chunk size typically results in a better
133 compression ratio. However, the MS implementation is seemingly not
134 compatible with all chunk sizes, especially for LZX compression, so the
135 defaults remain unchanged, with the exception of the new LZMS-compressed
136 WIMs, which use a larger chunk size by default.
138 The compression/decompression API exported by wimlib has been changed.
139 Now one set of functions handles all supported compression formats.
141 `wimcapture' and `wimappend' will now display the progress of scanning
142 the directory tree to capture, in addition to the progress of writing
143 data to the WIM. The '--verbose' option no longer does anything. The
144 library API change for this is the addition of several members to
145 `struct wimlib_progress_info_scan' available to progress callbacks.
147 `mkwinpeimg' now correctly handles the '--start-script' option when the
148 start script is not in the working directory.
150 Sequential extraction, previously requested by using
151 WIMLIB_EXTRACT_FLAG_SEQUENTIAL, is now the default.
152 WIMLIB_EXTRACT_FLAG_FILE_ORDER can be used to get the old default
153 behavior (extract in file order).
156 The new LZX compressor added in v1.5.2 has been improved and is now
157 enabled by default, except when `wimcapture' or `wimappend' is run
158 *without* the '--compress' option, in which case the faster LZX
159 compressor is used (the same as before). This behavior is reasonably
160 consistent with ImageX which actually uses "fast" (XPRESS) compression
161 by default. In those cases, use '--compress=maximum' to explicitly
162 capture a WIM image using the new (slower but better) LZX compressor.
164 The '--compress-slow' option still exists to `wimlib-imagex optimize',
165 but its new behavior is to tweak the new LZX compressor even more to
166 produce an even better compression ratio at the cost of more time spent
169 `wimlib-imagex optimize' now supports the '--compress=TYPE' option,
170 which recompresses the WIM file using the specified compression TYPE.
171 The new library API function used for this is
172 wimlib_set_output_compression_type().
174 Added the wimlib_get_xml_data() function to allow library clients to
175 easily retrieve the raw XML data from a WIM file if needed.
177 Fixed a bug that could cause an error code to be incorrectly returned
178 when writing XML data containing a <WINDOWS> element.
180 Mounted WIM images will now correctly show the default file stream even
181 if appears in the alternate data stream entries of the corresponding WIM
185 Added a new experimental LZX compressor which can be enabled by passing
186 '--compress-slow' to `wimlib-imagex capture' or `wimlib-imagex
187 optimize'. (The latter is only applicable if the WIM is already
188 LZX-compressed and the '--recompress' option is also given.) The
189 experimental compressor is much slower but compresses the data slightly
190 more --- currently usually to within a fraction of a percent of the
191 results from WIMGAPI/ImageX.
193 A workaround has been added for compatibility with versions of WinPE
194 that interpret alternate data stream entries in the boot WIM
197 An alignment bug that caused a crash in the LZX decompressor on some
200 wimlib now attempts to clear the WIM_HDR_FLAG_WRITE_IN_PROGRESS flag in
201 the WIM header when restoring the previous state of a WIM it failed to
204 Added a workaround to avoid an access denied error on Windows when
205 replacing a WIM file that another process has opened.
208 wimlib can now open WinPE WIMs from WAIK v2.1, which had a quirk that
209 needed to be handled.
211 A bug in the interpretation of negative IMAGE indices in the
212 --update-of=[WIMFILE:]IMAGE option to `wimlib-imagex capture' and
213 `wimlib-imagex append' has been fixed.
215 A workaround has been added to successfully apply security descriptors
216 with empty DACLs when the NTFS-3g apply mode is being used with NTFS-3g
217 2013.1.13 or earlier.
219 `wimlib-imagex capture' can now accept the '--delta-from' option
223 Added support for "pipable" WIMs. Pipable WIMs allow capturing images
224 to standard output and applying images from standard input, but they are
225 not compatible with Microsoft's software and are not created by default.
226 See the documentation for --pipable flag of `wimlib-imagex capture' for
229 To better support incremental backups, added support for declaring an
230 image as a modified form of another image. See the documentation for
231 the '--update-of' option of `wimlib-imagex append' and `wimlib-imagex
234 Added supported for "delta" WIMs. See the documentation for the
235 '--delta-from' option of `wimlib-imagex capture'.
237 The library support for managing split WIMs has been changed to support
238 other arrangements, such as delta WIMs, and be easier to use. This
239 change is visible in `wimlib-imagex', which also can now accept the
240 '--ref' option multiple times, and also now supports "delta" WIMs as
243 wimlib now preserves WIM integrity tables by default, even if
244 WIMLIB_WRITE_FLAG_CHECK_INTEGRITY is not specified. This changes the
245 behavior of `wimlib-imagex' whenever the WIM being operated on contains
246 an integrity table and the '--check' option is not specified.
248 `wimlib-imagex capture' now creates LZX-compressed WIMs by default
249 (when --compress is not specified). This provides the best compression
250 ratio by default, which is usually what is desired, at a cost of some
253 `wimlib-imagex' now supports being invoked as wimCOMMAND, where COMMAND
254 is the command as in `wimlib-imagex COMMAND'; for example, it can be
255 invoked as `wimapply' as an alternative to `wimlib-imagex apply'. The
256 appropriate hard links are created in UNIX installations of
257 `wimlib-imagex', while for the Windows distribution of `wimlib-imagex',
258 batch files that emulate this behavior are generated.
260 Security descriptors are now extracted correctly on Windows.
262 Fixed archiving DOS names in NTFS-3g capture mode.
264 The extraction code has been rewritten and it will now be easier to
265 support new features on all supported backends (currently Win32, UNIX,
266 and NTFS-3g). For example, hard-linked extraction mode (--hardlink) is
267 now supported on all backends, not just UNIX.
269 `mkwinpeimg' now supports grabbing files from the WAIK supplement rather
270 than the WAIK itself.
272 wimlib_global_init() now, by default, attempts to acquire additional
273 privileges on Windows, so library clients need not do this.
275 This update bumps the shared library version number up to 9, since it is
276 not binary compatibible with previous releases.
279 Fixed bug in `wimlib-imagex export' that made it impossible to export an
280 image from a WIM that is readonly at the filesystem level.
282 Return error code rather than segfaulting when trying to list files from
283 a non-first part of a split WIM.
285 Joining a WIM will now preserve the RP_FIX and READONLY flags.
288 On Windows, paths given to wimlib-imagex are now treated case
291 Improved behavior regarding invalid filenames; in particular, on
292 Windows, wimlib-imagex will, when extracting, now omit (with an option
293 to override this default) filenames differing only in case, or filenames
294 containing characters not valid on Windows.
296 On Windows, wimlib now supports capturing and extracting long paths
297 (longer than the so-called MAX_PATH).
299 On Windows, `wimlib-imagex update' now acquires proper privileges when
300 running as an Administrator.
302 `wimlib-imagex update' will now complain if no image is specified when
303 trying to update a multi-image WIM.
305 `wimlib-imagex update' now supports specifying a single update command
306 directly on the command line using the --command option.
308 wimlib-imagex will now choose different units for progress messages,
309 depending on the amount of data that needs to be processed.
311 `wimlib-imagex append' will now generate a unique WIM image name if no
312 name is specified and the defaulted name already exists in the WIM.
314 wimlib now allows you to create unnamed WIM images, which can then only
315 be referred to by index.
317 wimlib now allows you to explicitly declare you want write access to a
318 WIM by providing the WIMLIB_OPEN_FLAG_WRITE_ACCESS flag to
321 wimlib now respects the WIM_HDR_FLAG_READONLY flag when set in the WIM
324 Progress callbacks have been added to wimlib's wimlib_update_image()
327 Added wimlib_get_wim_info(), wimlib_set_wim_info(),
328 wimlib_iterate_dir_tree(), and wimlib_iterate_lookup_table() functions
331 NTFS-3g capture now only warns about two conditions previously treated
334 Fixed a couple issues with using wimlib-imagex on UDF filesystems on
337 wimlib now correctly detects and returns an error when reading a WIM
338 image with a cyclic directory structure. (Fun fact: such a WIM will
339 crash Microsoft's software.)
342 Added new "extract" and "update" subcommands to wimlib-imagex, along
343 with associated APIs in the library. These commands are intended mainly
344 for Windows use but can be used on UNIX as well.
346 Many documentation improvements.
348 Fixed a bug in the Windows build where relative symbolic links were not
349 captured in reparse-point fixup mode.
351 Fixed a bug in the Windows build where file handles were left open to
352 the WIM file, causing `wimlib_imagex optimize' to fail in some cases.
354 Fixed a bug in the Windows build of wimlib-imagex where globbing
355 split-WIM parts could cause the program to crash.
357 Fixed a bug where the creation time of WIM images would be shown instead
358 of the last modification time.
360 With the Windows build it is now possible to restore a WIM containing
361 symbolic links as a non-Administrator; however you will receive warnings
362 about not being able to extract the symbolic links.
365 Capturing a WIM image should now be significantly faster in most cases
366 due to improved use of the operating system's cache and avoiding reading
367 files twice whenever possible.
369 The Windows build should now work on Windows XP.
371 The Windows build now supports capturing and restoring hidden,
372 compressed, sparse, and encrypted files.
374 The Windows build now supports capturing and applying WIM images from
375 filesystems other than NTFS (with some reduced functionality).
377 The Windows build now extracts short names correctly.
379 Added support for "reparse-point" fixups (i.e. fixing up of symbolic
380 links). See docs for --rpfix and --norpfix flags of `wimlib-imagex
381 capture' and `wimlib-imagex apply'.
383 The performance of splitting and joining WIMs should be slightly
386 The LZX and XPRESS compression and decompression functions are now
387 exported from the library.
390 Improvements and bugfixes for the Windows build.
392 Added --strict-acls options.
394 Fixed the way that wimlib determines the order of images in the WIM.
397 Since wimlib can now be used on Windows, wimlib's implementation of
398 ImageX has been renamed to wimlib-imagex to avoid confusion with
399 Microsoft's implementation of ImageX, which would have the same file
400 name ("imagex.exe"). If you really don't like this you can pass the
401 --with-imagex-progname option to `configure' to choose a different name,
402 or even simply rename the binary yourself (but the former way will
403 configure the man pages to use the chosen name).
405 Various bugs fixed in the Windows build. Mainly to do with capturing
406 and restoring alternate data streams correctly in weird cases, and
407 requesting the correct privileges when opening files. Also added the
408 --noacls options to wimlib-imagex capture, append, and apply.
410 Windows build again: FindFirstStreamW() and FindNextStreamW() are now
411 dynamically loaded, so this may make the library compatible with Windows
412 XP (however, there may still be other problems).
415 Added experimental support for native Windows builds. Binaries can be
416 downloaded from the SourceForge page.
418 --source-list option added to `imagex capture' and `imagex append'.
420 Better support for different character encodings.
423 Storing UNIX file owners, groups, and modes in WIM images is now
424 possible using `imagex capture' with the --unix-data flag.
426 Minor bug fixes and documentation fixes.
429 NTFS capture: Fixed capturing duplicate reparse points.
431 NTFS capture: Capture first unnamed stream if there are more than one
432 (print warning instead of error).
434 Allow multiple test cases to execute concurrently (e.g. make -j2 check).
437 Added --arch switch to mkwinpeimg script to support getting AMD64 WinPE
440 Update to work with ntfs-3g version 2013.1.13.
443 Fixed truncating file to shorter but non-zero length on read-write
446 Various code cleanups and minor documentation fixes.
449 LZX and XPRESS decompression have received some additional optimizations
450 and should now be even faster. (Although, they were already pretty
451 fast--- much faster than typical I/O speeds.)
453 Fixed a bug introduced in v1.2.1 that would cause a directory tree
454 containing hard links to be captured incorrectly in some cases.
457 By default, unmounting a read-write mounted WIM with 'imagex unmount
458 --commit' will now change the WIM in-place without needing to write the
459 entire WIM again. Use 'imagex unmount --commit --rebuild' to get the
462 'imagex unmount' no longer has a hard-coded limit of 10 minutes to wait
463 for a response from the daemon servicing the mounted WIM. Instead,
464 every second 'imagex unmount' will check if the daemon is still alive,
465 and keep waiting if so, otherwise terminate with an error.
467 'imagex unmount --commit' on a read-write mounted WIM will now print
468 progress information regarding the writing of new or modified streams
469 the WIM, just like when capturing or appending a WIM.
471 A small change has been made to XPRESS compression and it should improve
472 the compression ratio slightly.
474 A change was made that may improve performance slightly when applying a
475 WIM image to a NTFS volume.
477 Microsoft has managed to introduce even more bugs into their software,
478 and now the WIMs for Windows 8 have incorrect (too low) reference counts
479 for some streams. This is unsafe because such streams can be removed
480 when they are in actuality still referenced in the WIM (perhaps by a
481 different image). wimlib will now work around this problem by fixing
482 the stream reference counts. This is only done when wimlib_delete_image() is
483 called ('imagex delete') or when wimlib_mount_image() is called with
484 WIMLIB_MOUNT_FLAG_READWRITE ('imagex mountrw'). Please note that this
485 requires reading the metadata for all images in the WIM, so this will
486 make these operations noticably slower on WIMs with multiple images.
488 Various other bugfixes.
491 Appending images to a WIM is now be done by default without re-building
492 the whole WIM. Use the --rebuild flag to get the old behavior (which
493 was to re-build the entire WIM when a new image is appended).
495 A new command `imagex optimize' is now available to manually re-build a
496 WIM that has wasted space due to repeated appends.
498 Progress information has been improved, and now arbitrary callback
499 functions can be used to show the progress of a WIM operation.
501 A possible bug with changing the bootable image of a WIM was fixed.
503 Some advisory locking is now done to prevent two processes from
504 modifying a WIM at the same time (but only in some cases). For example,
505 you cannot mount two images from a WIM read-write at the same time.
507 Some functions have been reorganized:
508 * wimlib_mount() renamed to wimlib_mount_image().
509 * wimlib_unmount() renamed to wimlib_unmount_image().
510 * wimlib_overwrite_xml_and_header() removed as
511 wimlib_overwrite() suffices now.
512 * wimlib_apply_image_to_ntfs_volume() removed as
513 wimlib_extract_image() suffices now.
514 * wimlib_add_image_from_ntfs_volume() removed as
515 * wimlib_add_image() suffices now.
517 Previously, the soname of libwim.so has been 0.0.0, despite many
518 interface changes. The soname is now updated to 1.0.0 and will now be
519 updated each release.
522 Resources will now be compressed using multiple threads by default.
523 (This applies to `imagex capture', `imagex append', and `imagex
526 Some performance improvements in mounted WIMs.
528 More progress information is shown when capturing a WIM.
531 Lots of minor fixes, code cleanups, and some documentation updates.
532 Nothing in particular is really noteworthy.
535 LZX and XPRESS compression improvements.
537 Fixed calculation of Directory Count, File Count, Total Bytes, and Hard
538 Link Bytes of the WIM.
541 Fixed bug when capturing NTFS file with multiple named data streams.
543 Internally, we are now using inode structures, even though these don't
544 appear literally in the WIM file. This simplifies some of the code
545 (mainly for WIM mounting) and likely fixed a few problems, although it
549 Fixed problem when exporting images from XPRESS to LZX compressed WIM or
553 Enough changes to call it version 1.0.0!
555 Capturing a WIM directly from a NTFS volume, and applying a WIM directly
556 to a NTFS volume, is now supported.
558 Hard links and symbolic links have much improved support. They are
559 supported for WIM capture, WIM application, and mounted WIMs (you can
560 even make them on read-write mounted WIMs).
562 Alternate data streams are now supported on mounted WIMs through an
563 xattr or a Windows-style stream interface. Also they are supported when
564 capturing a WIM from NTFS or applying a WIM to NTFS.
566 Split WIMs are better supported. You may now apply an image directly
567 from a split WIM, mount an image from a split WIM read-only, or export
568 an image from a split WIM.
570 Using a capture configuration file is now supported (but not fully yet).
572 SHA1 message digests are checked in more places, so we can make sure
573 applied and captured data is correct.
575 Man pages have been updated and consolidated.
578 Fixed segfault when unmounting read-only WIM.
581 Support for joining and splitting WIMs.
582 Also, security data is now preserved by default.
585 Can now build with older gcc and system headers, like on CentOS 5.
588 Fixed bug that made it impossible to overwrite files in read-write
592 Write byte-order mark before WIM XML data. (imagex.exe requires this to