1 Only the most important changes more recent than version 0.6 are noted here.
4 Improved compatibility with version 3584 WIM / ESD files.
6 Performance improvements, including for extraction.
8 'add' commands passed to wimupdate will now replace existing
9 nondirectory files by default. Use the --no-replace option to get the
12 Added support for "WIMBoot" capture and extraction. See the
13 documentation for the new '--wimboot' option to wimcapture and wimapply
16 On UNIX-like systems, you can now backup and restore device nodes, named
17 pipes, and sockets. In addition, 32-bit user and group IDs are now
20 The way that UNIX data is stored in WIM files has been changed. If you
21 captured any WIMs with the --unix-data option, to upgrade them you'll
22 need to apply them with --unix-data using wimlib-imagex v1.6.2, then
23 re-capture them with --unix-data using this version.
25 wimlib now understands tagged metadata items, such as object IDs, that
26 can be stored in WIM directory entries.
28 Removed the --hardlink and --symlink options to wimapply, since I don't
29 think they are too useful and they got in the way of improving the code.
31 WIMs will now retain their GUIDs when rebuilt (e.g. with wimoptimize).
33 The 'mkwinpeimg' script now supports writing the ISO image to standard
36 On Windows, sparse file attributes are no longer set on extracted files.
38 The shared library version has been bumped up. The main
39 incompatibilities are:
41 - WIMLIB_COMPRESSION_TYPE_XPRESS is now 1 and
42 WIMLIB_COMPRESSION_TYPE_LZX is now 2 (so it's the same as
45 - Progress functions, including their prototypes as well as how
46 they are provided to the library, have been changed.
48 - 'struct wimlib_capture_config' has been removed. The library
49 now takes the path to the configuration file directly. This
50 affects wimlib_add_image(), wimlib_add_image_multisource(),
51 and wimlib_update_image(). However no code changes are
52 necessary if a NULL configuration was being used.
54 - Removed deprecated functions: some (de)compression functions,
55 wimlib_extract_files(), and wimlib_print_metadata().
57 - Removed extraction flags: WIMLIB_EXTRACT_FLAG_HARDLINK,
58 WIMLIB_EXTRACT_FLAG_SYMLINK, and
59 WIMLIB_EXTRACT_FLAG_FILE_ORDER.
61 - Removed progress messages:
62 WIMLIB_PROGRESS_MSG_APPLY_TIMESTAMPS,
63 WIMLIB_PROGRESS_MSG_EXTRACT_DIR_STRUCTURE_BEGIN,
64 WIMLIB_PROGRESS_MSG_EXTRACT_DIR_STRUCTURE_END.
66 - WIM paths passed to progress functions now have a leading
70 Case-insensitive comparisons of strings (e.g. filenames) containing
71 UTF-16 codepoints above 32767 are now done correctly.
73 Fixed build failure on Mac OS X.
75 wimunmount now provides the '--new-image' option to cause changes to a
76 read-write mounted image to be committed as a new image rather than as
77 an update of the mounted image. (The corresponding new library flag is
78 WIMLIB_UNMOUNT_FLAG_NEW_IMAGE.)
80 The LZMS ("recovery") compression chunk size, or "dictionary size", may
81 now be up to 1 GiB (1,073,741,824 bytes).
83 The performance of LZX ("maximum") and LZMS ("recovery") compression
84 with large chunk sizes has been slightly improved.
87 Stored files with size exactly 4 GiB (4,294,967,296 bytes) are now
88 decompressed correctly.
90 Fixed a bug in the LZX compressor introduced in v1.5.3. The bug
91 occurred in an unlikely case, and due to validity checks it did not
92 affect successfully created archives.
94 Fixed a minor compatibility issue with the LZMS compressor and
95 decompressor. This is *not* the default compression type and was only
96 introduced in v1.6.0. In the unlikely event that you created an
97 LZMS-compressed WIM with v1.6.0 and a checksum error is reported when
98 applying it with v1.6.1, decompress it with v1.6.0 then compress it with
101 Memory usage for LZMS and LZX compression has been decreased.
103 wimextract now allows wildcard characters in paths specified on the
104 command line. Also, the '--strict-wildcards' option has been removed
105 and replaced with the inverse option '--nullglob'. See the
106 documentation for wimextract for more details and changes.
108 The wimlib_extract_files() function is now considered deprecated in
109 favor of wimlib_extract_paths().
111 Fixed more permissions problems when extracting files on Windows.
113 A new '--no-attributes' option has been added to wimapply and
114 wimextract. The library flag is WIMLIB_EXTRACT_FLAG_NO_ATTRIBUTES.
116 The default chunk size is now set correctly when changing the
117 compression type of a WIM, for example with 'wimoptimize'.
119 The '--metadata' option to wiminfo has been replaced with the
120 '--detailed' option to wimdir.
122 In relevant wimlib-imagex commands, '--solid' may now be used as an
123 alias for '--pack-streams'.
126 Support for extracting and updating the new version 3584 WIMs has been
127 added. These WIMs typically pack many streams ("files") together into a
128 single compressed resource, thereby saving space. This degrades the
129 performance of random access (such as that which occurs on a mounted
130 image), but optimizations have been implemented for extraction. These
131 new WIM files also typically use a new compression format (LZMS), which
132 is similar to LZMA and can offer a better compression ratio than LZX.
133 These new WIM files can be created using `wimcapture' with
134 the '--compress=lzms --pack-streams' options. Note: this new WIM format
135 is used by the Windows 8 web downloader, but important segments of the
136 raw '.esd' files are encrypted, so wimlib will not be able to extract
137 such files until they are first decrypted.
139 wimlib now supports extracting files and directories from a WIM image
140 based on a "listfile" that itself contains the list of paths to extract.
141 For `wimextract', the syntax is to specify @LISTFILE instead of a PATH,
142 and for the library itself, the new APIs are wimlib_extract_pathlist()
143 and wimlib_extract_paths(). Path globs containing wildcard characters
146 For searching WIM files, wimlib now has configurable case sensitivity.
147 The default on Windows is still case-insensitive and the default on
148 UNIX-like systems is still case-sensitive, but this can be overridden
149 on either platform through flags to wimlib_global_init(). For
150 `wimlib-imagex', the environmental variable WIMLIB_IMAGEX_IGNORE_CASE
151 can be set to 1 or 0 for case-insensitive or case-sensitive behavior,
154 Support for compression chunk sizes greater than the default of 32768
155 bytes has been added. A larger chunk size typically results in a better
156 compression ratio. However, the MS implementation is seemingly not
157 compatible with all chunk sizes, especially for LZX compression, so the
158 defaults remain unchanged, with the exception of the new LZMS-compressed
159 WIMs, which use a larger chunk size by default.
161 The compression/decompression API exported by wimlib has been changed.
162 Now one set of functions handles all supported compression formats.
164 `wimcapture' and `wimappend' will now display the progress of scanning
165 the directory tree to capture, in addition to the progress of writing
166 data to the WIM. The '--verbose' option no longer does anything. The
167 library API change for this is the addition of several members to
168 `struct wimlib_progress_info_scan' available to progress callbacks.
170 `mkwinpeimg' now correctly handles the '--start-script' option when the
171 start script is not in the working directory.
173 Sequential extraction, previously requested by using
174 WIMLIB_EXTRACT_FLAG_SEQUENTIAL, is now the default.
175 WIMLIB_EXTRACT_FLAG_FILE_ORDER can be used to get the old default
176 behavior (extract in file order).
179 The new LZX compressor added in v1.5.2 has been improved and is now
180 enabled by default, except when `wimcapture' or `wimappend' is run
181 *without* the '--compress' option, in which case the faster LZX
182 compressor is used (the same as before). This behavior is reasonably
183 consistent with ImageX which actually uses "fast" (XPRESS) compression
184 by default. In those cases, use '--compress=maximum' to explicitly
185 capture a WIM image using the new (slower but better) LZX compressor.
187 The '--compress-slow' option still exists to `wimlib-imagex optimize',
188 but its new behavior is to tweak the new LZX compressor even more to
189 produce an even better compression ratio at the cost of more time spent
192 `wimlib-imagex optimize' now supports the '--compress=TYPE' option,
193 which recompresses the WIM file using the specified compression TYPE.
194 The new library API function used for this is
195 wimlib_set_output_compression_type().
197 Added the wimlib_get_xml_data() function to allow library clients to
198 easily retrieve the raw XML data from a WIM file if needed.
200 Fixed a bug that could cause an error code to be incorrectly returned
201 when writing XML data containing a <WINDOWS> element.
203 Mounted WIM images will now correctly show the default file stream even
204 if appears in the alternate data stream entries of the corresponding WIM
208 Added a new experimental LZX compressor which can be enabled by passing
209 '--compress-slow' to `wimlib-imagex capture' or `wimlib-imagex
210 optimize'. (The latter is only applicable if the WIM is already
211 LZX-compressed and the '--recompress' option is also given.) The
212 experimental compressor is much slower but compresses the data slightly
213 more --- currently usually to within a fraction of a percent of the
214 results from WIMGAPI/ImageX.
216 A workaround has been added for compatibility with versions of WinPE
217 that interpret alternate data stream entries in the boot WIM
220 An alignment bug that caused a crash in the LZX decompressor on some
223 wimlib now attempts to clear the WIM_HDR_FLAG_WRITE_IN_PROGRESS flag in
224 the WIM header when restoring the previous state of a WIM it failed to
227 Added a workaround to avoid an access denied error on Windows when
228 replacing a WIM file that another process has opened.
231 wimlib can now open WinPE WIMs from WAIK v2.1, which had a quirk that
232 needed to be handled.
234 A bug in the interpretation of negative IMAGE indices in the
235 --update-of=[WIMFILE:]IMAGE option to `wimlib-imagex capture' and
236 `wimlib-imagex append' has been fixed.
238 A workaround has been added to successfully apply security descriptors
239 with empty DACLs when the NTFS-3g apply mode is being used with NTFS-3g
240 2013.1.13 or earlier.
242 `wimlib-imagex capture' can now accept the '--delta-from' option
246 Added support for "pipable" WIMs. Pipable WIMs allow capturing images
247 to standard output and applying images from standard input, but they are
248 not compatible with Microsoft's software and are not created by default.
249 See the documentation for --pipable flag of `wimlib-imagex capture' for
252 To better support incremental backups, added support for declaring an
253 image as a modified form of another image. See the documentation for
254 the '--update-of' option of `wimlib-imagex append' and `wimlib-imagex
257 Added supported for "delta" WIMs. See the documentation for the
258 '--delta-from' option of `wimlib-imagex capture'.
260 The library support for managing split WIMs has been changed to support
261 other arrangements, such as delta WIMs, and be easier to use. This
262 change is visible in `wimlib-imagex', which also can now accept the
263 '--ref' option multiple times, and also now supports "delta" WIMs as
266 wimlib now preserves WIM integrity tables by default, even if
267 WIMLIB_WRITE_FLAG_CHECK_INTEGRITY is not specified. This changes the
268 behavior of `wimlib-imagex' whenever the WIM being operated on contains
269 an integrity table and the '--check' option is not specified.
271 `wimlib-imagex capture' now creates LZX-compressed WIMs by default
272 (when --compress is not specified). This provides the best compression
273 ratio by default, which is usually what is desired, at a cost of some
276 `wimlib-imagex' now supports being invoked as wimCOMMAND, where COMMAND
277 is the command as in `wimlib-imagex COMMAND'; for example, it can be
278 invoked as `wimapply' as an alternative to `wimlib-imagex apply'. The
279 appropriate hard links are created in UNIX installations of
280 `wimlib-imagex', while for the Windows distribution of `wimlib-imagex',
281 batch files that emulate this behavior are generated.
283 Security descriptors are now extracted correctly on Windows.
285 Fixed archiving DOS names in NTFS-3g capture mode.
287 The extraction code has been rewritten and it will now be easier to
288 support new features on all supported backends (currently Win32, UNIX,
289 and NTFS-3g). For example, hard-linked extraction mode (--hardlink) is
290 now supported on all backends, not just UNIX.
292 `mkwinpeimg' now supports grabbing files from the WAIK supplement rather
293 than the WAIK itself.
295 wimlib_global_init() now, by default, attempts to acquire additional
296 privileges on Windows, so library clients need not do this.
298 This update bumps the shared library version number up to 9, since it is
299 not binary compatibible with previous releases.
302 Fixed bug in `wimlib-imagex export' that made it impossible to export an
303 image from a WIM that is readonly at the filesystem level.
305 Return error code rather than segfaulting when trying to list files from
306 a non-first part of a split WIM.
308 Joining a WIM will now preserve the RP_FIX and READONLY flags.
311 On Windows, paths given to wimlib-imagex are now treated case
314 Improved behavior regarding invalid filenames; in particular, on
315 Windows, wimlib-imagex will, when extracting, now omit (with an option
316 to override this default) filenames differing only in case, or filenames
317 containing characters not valid on Windows.
319 On Windows, wimlib now supports capturing and extracting long paths
320 (longer than the so-called MAX_PATH).
322 On Windows, `wimlib-imagex update' now acquires proper privileges when
323 running as an Administrator.
325 `wimlib-imagex update' will now complain if no image is specified when
326 trying to update a multi-image WIM.
328 `wimlib-imagex update' now supports specifying a single update command
329 directly on the command line using the --command option.
331 wimlib-imagex will now choose different units for progress messages,
332 depending on the amount of data that needs to be processed.
334 `wimlib-imagex append' will now generate a unique WIM image name if no
335 name is specified and the defaulted name already exists in the WIM.
337 wimlib now allows you to create unnamed WIM images, which can then only
338 be referred to by index.
340 wimlib now allows you to explicitly declare you want write access to a
341 WIM by providing the WIMLIB_OPEN_FLAG_WRITE_ACCESS flag to
344 wimlib now respects the WIM_HDR_FLAG_READONLY flag when set in the WIM
347 Progress callbacks have been added to wimlib's wimlib_update_image()
350 Added wimlib_get_wim_info(), wimlib_set_wim_info(),
351 wimlib_iterate_dir_tree(), and wimlib_iterate_lookup_table() functions
354 NTFS-3g capture now only warns about two conditions previously treated
357 Fixed a couple issues with using wimlib-imagex on UDF filesystems on
360 wimlib now correctly detects and returns an error when reading a WIM
361 image with a cyclic directory structure. (Fun fact: such a WIM will
362 crash Microsoft's software.)
365 Added new "extract" and "update" subcommands to wimlib-imagex, along
366 with associated APIs in the library. These commands are intended mainly
367 for Windows use but can be used on UNIX as well.
369 Many documentation improvements.
371 Fixed a bug in the Windows build where relative symbolic links were not
372 captured in reparse-point fixup mode.
374 Fixed a bug in the Windows build where file handles were left open to
375 the WIM file, causing `wimlib_imagex optimize' to fail in some cases.
377 Fixed a bug in the Windows build of wimlib-imagex where globbing
378 split-WIM parts could cause the program to crash.
380 Fixed a bug where the creation time of WIM images would be shown instead
381 of the last modification time.
383 With the Windows build it is now possible to restore a WIM containing
384 symbolic links as a non-Administrator; however you will receive warnings
385 about not being able to extract the symbolic links.
388 Capturing a WIM image should now be significantly faster in most cases
389 due to improved use of the operating system's cache and avoiding reading
390 files twice whenever possible.
392 The Windows build should now work on Windows XP.
394 The Windows build now supports capturing and restoring hidden,
395 compressed, sparse, and encrypted files.
397 The Windows build now supports capturing and applying WIM images from
398 filesystems other than NTFS (with some reduced functionality).
400 The Windows build now extracts short names correctly.
402 Added support for "reparse-point" fixups (i.e. fixing up of symbolic
403 links). See docs for --rpfix and --norpfix flags of `wimlib-imagex
404 capture' and `wimlib-imagex apply'.
406 The performance of splitting and joining WIMs should be slightly
409 The LZX and XPRESS compression and decompression functions are now
410 exported from the library.
413 Improvements and bugfixes for the Windows build.
415 Added --strict-acls options.
417 Fixed the way that wimlib determines the order of images in the WIM.
420 Since wimlib can now be used on Windows, wimlib's implementation of
421 ImageX has been renamed to wimlib-imagex to avoid confusion with
422 Microsoft's implementation of ImageX, which would have the same file
423 name ("imagex.exe"). If you really don't like this you can pass the
424 --with-imagex-progname option to `configure' to choose a different name,
425 or even simply rename the binary yourself (but the former way will
426 configure the man pages to use the chosen name).
428 Various bugs fixed in the Windows build. Mainly to do with capturing
429 and restoring alternate data streams correctly in weird cases, and
430 requesting the correct privileges when opening files. Also added the
431 --noacls options to wimlib-imagex capture, append, and apply.
433 Windows build again: FindFirstStreamW() and FindNextStreamW() are now
434 dynamically loaded, so this may make the library compatible with Windows
435 XP (however, there may still be other problems).
438 Added experimental support for native Windows builds. Binaries can be
439 downloaded from the SourceForge page.
441 --source-list option added to `imagex capture' and `imagex append'.
443 Better support for different character encodings.
446 Storing UNIX file owners, groups, and modes in WIM images is now
447 possible using `imagex capture' with the --unix-data flag.
449 Minor bug fixes and documentation fixes.
452 NTFS capture: Fixed capturing duplicate reparse points.
454 NTFS capture: Capture first unnamed stream if there are more than one
455 (print warning instead of error).
457 Allow multiple test cases to execute concurrently (e.g. make -j2 check).
460 Added --arch switch to mkwinpeimg script to support getting AMD64 WinPE
463 Update to work with ntfs-3g version 2013.1.13.
466 Fixed truncating file to shorter but non-zero length on read-write
469 Various code cleanups and minor documentation fixes.
472 LZX and XPRESS decompression have received some additional optimizations
473 and should now be even faster. (Although, they were already pretty
474 fast--- much faster than typical I/O speeds.)
476 Fixed a bug introduced in v1.2.1 that would cause a directory tree
477 containing hard links to be captured incorrectly in some cases.
480 By default, unmounting a read-write mounted WIM with 'imagex unmount
481 --commit' will now change the WIM in-place without needing to write the
482 entire WIM again. Use 'imagex unmount --commit --rebuild' to get the
485 'imagex unmount' no longer has a hard-coded limit of 10 minutes to wait
486 for a response from the daemon servicing the mounted WIM. Instead,
487 every second 'imagex unmount' will check if the daemon is still alive,
488 and keep waiting if so, otherwise terminate with an error.
490 'imagex unmount --commit' on a read-write mounted WIM will now print
491 progress information regarding the writing of new or modified streams
492 the WIM, just like when capturing or appending a WIM.
494 A small change has been made to XPRESS compression and it should improve
495 the compression ratio slightly.
497 A change was made that may improve performance slightly when applying a
498 WIM image to a NTFS volume.
500 Microsoft has managed to introduce even more bugs into their software,
501 and now the WIMs for Windows 8 have incorrect (too low) reference counts
502 for some streams. This is unsafe because such streams can be removed
503 when they are in actuality still referenced in the WIM (perhaps by a
504 different image). wimlib will now work around this problem by fixing
505 the stream reference counts. This is only done when wimlib_delete_image() is
506 called ('imagex delete') or when wimlib_mount_image() is called with
507 WIMLIB_MOUNT_FLAG_READWRITE ('imagex mountrw'). Please note that this
508 requires reading the metadata for all images in the WIM, so this will
509 make these operations noticably slower on WIMs with multiple images.
511 Various other bugfixes.
514 Appending images to a WIM is now be done by default without re-building
515 the whole WIM. Use the --rebuild flag to get the old behavior (which
516 was to re-build the entire WIM when a new image is appended).
518 A new command `imagex optimize' is now available to manually re-build a
519 WIM that has wasted space due to repeated appends.
521 Progress information has been improved, and now arbitrary callback
522 functions can be used to show the progress of a WIM operation.
524 A possible bug with changing the bootable image of a WIM was fixed.
526 Some advisory locking is now done to prevent two processes from
527 modifying a WIM at the same time (but only in some cases). For example,
528 you cannot mount two images from a WIM read-write at the same time.
530 Some functions have been reorganized:
531 * wimlib_mount() renamed to wimlib_mount_image().
532 * wimlib_unmount() renamed to wimlib_unmount_image().
533 * wimlib_overwrite_xml_and_header() removed as
534 wimlib_overwrite() suffices now.
535 * wimlib_apply_image_to_ntfs_volume() removed as
536 wimlib_extract_image() suffices now.
537 * wimlib_add_image_from_ntfs_volume() removed as
538 * wimlib_add_image() suffices now.
540 Previously, the soname of libwim.so has been 0.0.0, despite many
541 interface changes. The soname is now updated to 1.0.0 and will now be
542 updated each release.
545 Resources will now be compressed using multiple threads by default.
546 (This applies to `imagex capture', `imagex append', and `imagex
549 Some performance improvements in mounted WIMs.
551 More progress information is shown when capturing a WIM.
554 Lots of minor fixes, code cleanups, and some documentation updates.
555 Nothing in particular is really noteworthy.
558 LZX and XPRESS compression improvements.
560 Fixed calculation of Directory Count, File Count, Total Bytes, and Hard
561 Link Bytes of the WIM.
564 Fixed bug when capturing NTFS file with multiple named data streams.
566 Internally, we are now using inode structures, even though these don't
567 appear literally in the WIM file. This simplifies some of the code
568 (mainly for WIM mounting) and likely fixed a few problems, although it
572 Fixed problem when exporting images from XPRESS to LZX compressed WIM or
576 Enough changes to call it version 1.0.0!
578 Capturing a WIM directly from a NTFS volume, and applying a WIM directly
579 to a NTFS volume, is now supported.
581 Hard links and symbolic links have much improved support. They are
582 supported for WIM capture, WIM application, and mounted WIMs (you can
583 even make them on read-write mounted WIMs).
585 Alternate data streams are now supported on mounted WIMs through an
586 xattr or a Windows-style stream interface. Also they are supported when
587 capturing a WIM from NTFS or applying a WIM to NTFS.
589 Split WIMs are better supported. You may now apply an image directly
590 from a split WIM, mount an image from a split WIM read-only, or export
591 an image from a split WIM.
593 Using a capture configuration file is now supported (but not fully yet).
595 SHA1 message digests are checked in more places, so we can make sure
596 applied and captured data is correct.
598 Man pages have been updated and consolidated.
601 Fixed segfault when unmounting read-only WIM.
604 Support for joining and splitting WIMs.
605 Also, security data is now preserved by default.
608 Can now build with older gcc and system headers, like on CentOS 5.
611 Fixed bug that made it impossible to overwrite files in read-write
615 Write byte-order mark before WIM XML data. (imagex.exe requires this to