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 On UNIX, configuring with --disable-xattr or --enable-xattr is no longer
39 supported. Mounting WIM images now always requires extended attribute
40 support. Use --without-fuse to disable support for mounting WIM images.
42 The shared library version has been bumped up. The main
43 incompatibilities are:
45 - WIMLIB_COMPRESSION_TYPE_XPRESS is now 1 and
46 WIMLIB_COMPRESSION_TYPE_LZX is now 2 (so it's the same as
49 - Progress functions, including their prototypes as well as how
50 they are provided to the library, have been changed.
52 - 'struct wimlib_capture_config' has been removed. The library
53 now takes the path to the configuration file directly. This
54 affects wimlib_add_image(), wimlib_add_image_multisource(),
55 and wimlib_update_image(). However no code changes are
56 necessary if a NULL configuration was being used.
58 - Removed deprecated functions: some (de)compression functions,
59 wimlib_extract_files(), and wimlib_print_metadata().
61 - Removed extraction flags: WIMLIB_EXTRACT_FLAG_HARDLINK,
62 WIMLIB_EXTRACT_FLAG_SYMLINK, and
63 WIMLIB_EXTRACT_FLAG_FILE_ORDER.
65 - Removed progress messages:
66 WIMLIB_PROGRESS_MSG_APPLY_TIMESTAMPS,
67 WIMLIB_PROGRESS_MSG_EXTRACT_DIR_STRUCTURE_BEGIN,
68 WIMLIB_PROGRESS_MSG_EXTRACT_DIR_STRUCTURE_END.
70 - WIM paths passed to progress functions now have a leading
74 Case-insensitive comparisons of strings (e.g. filenames) containing
75 UTF-16 codepoints above 32767 are now done correctly.
77 Fixed build failure on Mac OS X.
79 wimunmount now provides the '--new-image' option to cause changes to a
80 read-write mounted image to be committed as a new image rather than as
81 an update of the mounted image. (The corresponding new library flag is
82 WIMLIB_UNMOUNT_FLAG_NEW_IMAGE.)
84 The LZMS ("recovery") compression chunk size, or "dictionary size", may
85 now be up to 1 GiB (1,073,741,824 bytes).
87 The performance of LZX ("maximum") and LZMS ("recovery") compression
88 with large chunk sizes has been slightly improved.
91 Stored files with size exactly 4 GiB (4,294,967,296 bytes) are now
92 decompressed correctly.
94 Fixed a bug in the LZX compressor introduced in v1.5.3. The bug
95 occurred in an unlikely case, and due to validity checks it did not
96 affect successfully created archives.
98 Fixed a minor compatibility issue with the LZMS compressor and
99 decompressor. This is *not* the default compression type and was only
100 introduced in v1.6.0. In the unlikely event that you created an
101 LZMS-compressed WIM with v1.6.0 and a checksum error is reported when
102 applying it with v1.6.1, decompress it with v1.6.0 then compress it with
105 Memory usage for LZMS and LZX compression has been decreased.
107 wimextract now allows wildcard characters in paths specified on the
108 command line. Also, the '--strict-wildcards' option has been removed
109 and replaced with the inverse option '--nullglob'. See the
110 documentation for wimextract for more details and changes.
112 The wimlib_extract_files() function is now considered deprecated in
113 favor of wimlib_extract_paths().
115 Fixed more permissions problems when extracting files on Windows.
117 A new '--no-attributes' option has been added to wimapply and
118 wimextract. The library flag is WIMLIB_EXTRACT_FLAG_NO_ATTRIBUTES.
120 The default chunk size is now set correctly when changing the
121 compression type of a WIM, for example with 'wimoptimize'.
123 The '--metadata' option to wiminfo has been replaced with the
124 '--detailed' option to wimdir.
126 In relevant wimlib-imagex commands, '--solid' may now be used as an
127 alias for '--pack-streams'.
130 Support for extracting and updating the new version 3584 WIMs has been
131 added. These WIMs typically pack many streams ("files") together into a
132 single compressed resource, thereby saving space. This degrades the
133 performance of random access (such as that which occurs on a mounted
134 image), but optimizations have been implemented for extraction. These
135 new WIM files also typically use a new compression format (LZMS), which
136 is similar to LZMA and can offer a better compression ratio than LZX.
137 These new WIM files can be created using `wimcapture' with
138 the '--compress=lzms --pack-streams' options. Note: this new WIM format
139 is used by the Windows 8 web downloader, but important segments of the
140 raw '.esd' files are encrypted, so wimlib will not be able to extract
141 such files until they are first decrypted.
143 wimlib now supports extracting files and directories from a WIM image
144 based on a "listfile" that itself contains the list of paths to extract.
145 For `wimextract', the syntax is to specify @LISTFILE instead of a PATH,
146 and for the library itself, the new APIs are wimlib_extract_pathlist()
147 and wimlib_extract_paths(). Path globs containing wildcard characters
150 For searching WIM files, wimlib now has configurable case sensitivity.
151 The default on Windows is still case-insensitive and the default on
152 UNIX-like systems is still case-sensitive, but this can be overridden
153 on either platform through flags to wimlib_global_init(). For
154 `wimlib-imagex', the environmental variable WIMLIB_IMAGEX_IGNORE_CASE
155 can be set to 1 or 0 for case-insensitive or case-sensitive behavior,
158 Support for compression chunk sizes greater than the default of 32768
159 bytes has been added. A larger chunk size typically results in a better
160 compression ratio. However, the MS implementation is seemingly not
161 compatible with all chunk sizes, especially for LZX compression, so the
162 defaults remain unchanged, with the exception of the new LZMS-compressed
163 WIMs, which use a larger chunk size by default.
165 The compression/decompression API exported by wimlib has been changed.
166 Now one set of functions handles all supported compression formats.
168 `wimcapture' and `wimappend' will now display the progress of scanning
169 the directory tree to capture, in addition to the progress of writing
170 data to the WIM. The '--verbose' option no longer does anything. The
171 library API change for this is the addition of several members to
172 `struct wimlib_progress_info_scan' available to progress callbacks.
174 `mkwinpeimg' now correctly handles the '--start-script' option when the
175 start script is not in the working directory.
177 Sequential extraction, previously requested by using
178 WIMLIB_EXTRACT_FLAG_SEQUENTIAL, is now the default.
179 WIMLIB_EXTRACT_FLAG_FILE_ORDER can be used to get the old default
180 behavior (extract in file order).
183 The new LZX compressor added in v1.5.2 has been improved and is now
184 enabled by default, except when `wimcapture' or `wimappend' is run
185 *without* the '--compress' option, in which case the faster LZX
186 compressor is used (the same as before). This behavior is reasonably
187 consistent with ImageX which actually uses "fast" (XPRESS) compression
188 by default. In those cases, use '--compress=maximum' to explicitly
189 capture a WIM image using the new (slower but better) LZX compressor.
191 The '--compress-slow' option still exists to `wimlib-imagex optimize',
192 but its new behavior is to tweak the new LZX compressor even more to
193 produce an even better compression ratio at the cost of more time spent
196 `wimlib-imagex optimize' now supports the '--compress=TYPE' option,
197 which recompresses the WIM file using the specified compression TYPE.
198 The new library API function used for this is
199 wimlib_set_output_compression_type().
201 Added the wimlib_get_xml_data() function to allow library clients to
202 easily retrieve the raw XML data from a WIM file if needed.
204 Fixed a bug that could cause an error code to be incorrectly returned
205 when writing XML data containing a <WINDOWS> element.
207 Mounted WIM images will now correctly show the default file stream even
208 if appears in the alternate data stream entries of the corresponding WIM
212 Added a new experimental LZX compressor which can be enabled by passing
213 '--compress-slow' to `wimlib-imagex capture' or `wimlib-imagex
214 optimize'. (The latter is only applicable if the WIM is already
215 LZX-compressed and the '--recompress' option is also given.) The
216 experimental compressor is much slower but compresses the data slightly
217 more --- currently usually to within a fraction of a percent of the
218 results from WIMGAPI/ImageX.
220 A workaround has been added for compatibility with versions of WinPE
221 that interpret alternate data stream entries in the boot WIM
224 An alignment bug that caused a crash in the LZX decompressor on some
227 wimlib now attempts to clear the WIM_HDR_FLAG_WRITE_IN_PROGRESS flag in
228 the WIM header when restoring the previous state of a WIM it failed to
231 Added a workaround to avoid an access denied error on Windows when
232 replacing a WIM file that another process has opened.
235 wimlib can now open WinPE WIMs from WAIK v2.1, which had a quirk that
236 needed to be handled.
238 A bug in the interpretation of negative IMAGE indices in the
239 --update-of=[WIMFILE:]IMAGE option to `wimlib-imagex capture' and
240 `wimlib-imagex append' has been fixed.
242 A workaround has been added to successfully apply security descriptors
243 with empty DACLs when the NTFS-3g apply mode is being used with NTFS-3g
244 2013.1.13 or earlier.
246 `wimlib-imagex capture' can now accept the '--delta-from' option
250 Added support for "pipable" WIMs. Pipable WIMs allow capturing images
251 to standard output and applying images from standard input, but they are
252 not compatible with Microsoft's software and are not created by default.
253 See the documentation for --pipable flag of `wimlib-imagex capture' for
256 To better support incremental backups, added support for declaring an
257 image as a modified form of another image. See the documentation for
258 the '--update-of' option of `wimlib-imagex append' and `wimlib-imagex
261 Added supported for "delta" WIMs. See the documentation for the
262 '--delta-from' option of `wimlib-imagex capture'.
264 The library support for managing split WIMs has been changed to support
265 other arrangements, such as delta WIMs, and be easier to use. This
266 change is visible in `wimlib-imagex', which also can now accept the
267 '--ref' option multiple times, and also now supports "delta" WIMs as
270 wimlib now preserves WIM integrity tables by default, even if
271 WIMLIB_WRITE_FLAG_CHECK_INTEGRITY is not specified. This changes the
272 behavior of `wimlib-imagex' whenever the WIM being operated on contains
273 an integrity table and the '--check' option is not specified.
275 `wimlib-imagex capture' now creates LZX-compressed WIMs by default
276 (when --compress is not specified). This provides the best compression
277 ratio by default, which is usually what is desired, at a cost of some
280 `wimlib-imagex' now supports being invoked as wimCOMMAND, where COMMAND
281 is the command as in `wimlib-imagex COMMAND'; for example, it can be
282 invoked as `wimapply' as an alternative to `wimlib-imagex apply'. The
283 appropriate hard links are created in UNIX installations of
284 `wimlib-imagex', while for the Windows distribution of `wimlib-imagex',
285 batch files that emulate this behavior are generated.
287 Security descriptors are now extracted correctly on Windows.
289 Fixed archiving DOS names in NTFS-3g capture mode.
291 The extraction code has been rewritten and it will now be easier to
292 support new features on all supported backends (currently Win32, UNIX,
293 and NTFS-3g). For example, hard-linked extraction mode (--hardlink) is
294 now supported on all backends, not just UNIX.
296 `mkwinpeimg' now supports grabbing files from the WAIK supplement rather
297 than the WAIK itself.
299 wimlib_global_init() now, by default, attempts to acquire additional
300 privileges on Windows, so library clients need not do this.
302 This update bumps the shared library version number up to 9, since it is
303 not binary compatibible with previous releases.
306 Fixed bug in `wimlib-imagex export' that made it impossible to export an
307 image from a WIM that is readonly at the filesystem level.
309 Return error code rather than segfaulting when trying to list files from
310 a non-first part of a split WIM.
312 Joining a WIM will now preserve the RP_FIX and READONLY flags.
315 On Windows, paths given to wimlib-imagex are now treated case
318 Improved behavior regarding invalid filenames; in particular, on
319 Windows, wimlib-imagex will, when extracting, now omit (with an option
320 to override this default) filenames differing only in case, or filenames
321 containing characters not valid on Windows.
323 On Windows, wimlib now supports capturing and extracting long paths
324 (longer than the so-called MAX_PATH).
326 On Windows, `wimlib-imagex update' now acquires proper privileges when
327 running as an Administrator.
329 `wimlib-imagex update' will now complain if no image is specified when
330 trying to update a multi-image WIM.
332 `wimlib-imagex update' now supports specifying a single update command
333 directly on the command line using the --command option.
335 wimlib-imagex will now choose different units for progress messages,
336 depending on the amount of data that needs to be processed.
338 `wimlib-imagex append' will now generate a unique WIM image name if no
339 name is specified and the defaulted name already exists in the WIM.
341 wimlib now allows you to create unnamed WIM images, which can then only
342 be referred to by index.
344 wimlib now allows you to explicitly declare you want write access to a
345 WIM by providing the WIMLIB_OPEN_FLAG_WRITE_ACCESS flag to
348 wimlib now respects the WIM_HDR_FLAG_READONLY flag when set in the WIM
351 Progress callbacks have been added to wimlib's wimlib_update_image()
354 Added wimlib_get_wim_info(), wimlib_set_wim_info(),
355 wimlib_iterate_dir_tree(), and wimlib_iterate_lookup_table() functions
358 NTFS-3g capture now only warns about two conditions previously treated
361 Fixed a couple issues with using wimlib-imagex on UDF filesystems on
364 wimlib now correctly detects and returns an error when reading a WIM
365 image with a cyclic directory structure. (Fun fact: such a WIM will
366 crash Microsoft's software.)
369 Added new "extract" and "update" subcommands to wimlib-imagex, along
370 with associated APIs in the library. These commands are intended mainly
371 for Windows use but can be used on UNIX as well.
373 Many documentation improvements.
375 Fixed a bug in the Windows build where relative symbolic links were not
376 captured in reparse-point fixup mode.
378 Fixed a bug in the Windows build where file handles were left open to
379 the WIM file, causing `wimlib_imagex optimize' to fail in some cases.
381 Fixed a bug in the Windows build of wimlib-imagex where globbing
382 split-WIM parts could cause the program to crash.
384 Fixed a bug where the creation time of WIM images would be shown instead
385 of the last modification time.
387 With the Windows build it is now possible to restore a WIM containing
388 symbolic links as a non-Administrator; however you will receive warnings
389 about not being able to extract the symbolic links.
392 Capturing a WIM image should now be significantly faster in most cases
393 due to improved use of the operating system's cache and avoiding reading
394 files twice whenever possible.
396 The Windows build should now work on Windows XP.
398 The Windows build now supports capturing and restoring hidden,
399 compressed, sparse, and encrypted files.
401 The Windows build now supports capturing and applying WIM images from
402 filesystems other than NTFS (with some reduced functionality).
404 The Windows build now extracts short names correctly.
406 Added support for "reparse-point" fixups (i.e. fixing up of symbolic
407 links). See docs for --rpfix and --norpfix flags of `wimlib-imagex
408 capture' and `wimlib-imagex apply'.
410 The performance of splitting and joining WIMs should be slightly
413 The LZX and XPRESS compression and decompression functions are now
414 exported from the library.
417 Improvements and bugfixes for the Windows build.
419 Added --strict-acls options.
421 Fixed the way that wimlib determines the order of images in the WIM.
424 Since wimlib can now be used on Windows, wimlib's implementation of
425 ImageX has been renamed to wimlib-imagex to avoid confusion with
426 Microsoft's implementation of ImageX, which would have the same file
427 name ("imagex.exe"). If you really don't like this you can pass the
428 --with-imagex-progname option to `configure' to choose a different name,
429 or even simply rename the binary yourself (but the former way will
430 configure the man pages to use the chosen name).
432 Various bugs fixed in the Windows build. Mainly to do with capturing
433 and restoring alternate data streams correctly in weird cases, and
434 requesting the correct privileges when opening files. Also added the
435 --noacls options to wimlib-imagex capture, append, and apply.
437 Windows build again: FindFirstStreamW() and FindNextStreamW() are now
438 dynamically loaded, so this may make the library compatible with Windows
439 XP (however, there may still be other problems).
442 Added experimental support for native Windows builds. Binaries can be
443 downloaded from the SourceForge page.
445 --source-list option added to `imagex capture' and `imagex append'.
447 Better support for different character encodings.
450 Storing UNIX file owners, groups, and modes in WIM images is now
451 possible using `imagex capture' with the --unix-data flag.
453 Minor bug fixes and documentation fixes.
456 NTFS capture: Fixed capturing duplicate reparse points.
458 NTFS capture: Capture first unnamed stream if there are more than one
459 (print warning instead of error).
461 Allow multiple test cases to execute concurrently (e.g. make -j2 check).
464 Added --arch switch to mkwinpeimg script to support getting AMD64 WinPE
467 Update to work with ntfs-3g version 2013.1.13.
470 Fixed truncating file to shorter but non-zero length on read-write
473 Various code cleanups and minor documentation fixes.
476 LZX and XPRESS decompression have received some additional optimizations
477 and should now be even faster. (Although, they were already pretty
478 fast--- much faster than typical I/O speeds.)
480 Fixed a bug introduced in v1.2.1 that would cause a directory tree
481 containing hard links to be captured incorrectly in some cases.
484 By default, unmounting a read-write mounted WIM with 'imagex unmount
485 --commit' will now change the WIM in-place without needing to write the
486 entire WIM again. Use 'imagex unmount --commit --rebuild' to get the
489 'imagex unmount' no longer has a hard-coded limit of 10 minutes to wait
490 for a response from the daemon servicing the mounted WIM. Instead,
491 every second 'imagex unmount' will check if the daemon is still alive,
492 and keep waiting if so, otherwise terminate with an error.
494 'imagex unmount --commit' on a read-write mounted WIM will now print
495 progress information regarding the writing of new or modified streams
496 the WIM, just like when capturing or appending a WIM.
498 A small change has been made to XPRESS compression and it should improve
499 the compression ratio slightly.
501 A change was made that may improve performance slightly when applying a
502 WIM image to a NTFS volume.
504 Microsoft has managed to introduce even more bugs into their software,
505 and now the WIMs for Windows 8 have incorrect (too low) reference counts
506 for some streams. This is unsafe because such streams can be removed
507 when they are in actuality still referenced in the WIM (perhaps by a
508 different image). wimlib will now work around this problem by fixing
509 the stream reference counts. This is only done when wimlib_delete_image() is
510 called ('imagex delete') or when wimlib_mount_image() is called with
511 WIMLIB_MOUNT_FLAG_READWRITE ('imagex mountrw'). Please note that this
512 requires reading the metadata for all images in the WIM, so this will
513 make these operations noticably slower on WIMs with multiple images.
515 Various other bugfixes.
518 Appending images to a WIM is now be done by default without re-building
519 the whole WIM. Use the --rebuild flag to get the old behavior (which
520 was to re-build the entire WIM when a new image is appended).
522 A new command `imagex optimize' is now available to manually re-build a
523 WIM that has wasted space due to repeated appends.
525 Progress information has been improved, and now arbitrary callback
526 functions can be used to show the progress of a WIM operation.
528 A possible bug with changing the bootable image of a WIM was fixed.
530 Some advisory locking is now done to prevent two processes from
531 modifying a WIM at the same time (but only in some cases). For example,
532 you cannot mount two images from a WIM read-write at the same time.
534 Some functions have been reorganized:
535 * wimlib_mount() renamed to wimlib_mount_image().
536 * wimlib_unmount() renamed to wimlib_unmount_image().
537 * wimlib_overwrite_xml_and_header() removed as
538 wimlib_overwrite() suffices now.
539 * wimlib_apply_image_to_ntfs_volume() removed as
540 wimlib_extract_image() suffices now.
541 * wimlib_add_image_from_ntfs_volume() removed as
542 * wimlib_add_image() suffices now.
544 Previously, the soname of libwim.so has been 0.0.0, despite many
545 interface changes. The soname is now updated to 1.0.0 and will now be
546 updated each release.
549 Resources will now be compressed using multiple threads by default.
550 (This applies to `imagex capture', `imagex append', and `imagex
553 Some performance improvements in mounted WIMs.
555 More progress information is shown when capturing a WIM.
558 Lots of minor fixes, code cleanups, and some documentation updates.
559 Nothing in particular is really noteworthy.
562 LZX and XPRESS compression improvements.
564 Fixed calculation of Directory Count, File Count, Total Bytes, and Hard
565 Link Bytes of the WIM.
568 Fixed bug when capturing NTFS file with multiple named data streams.
570 Internally, we are now using inode structures, even though these don't
571 appear literally in the WIM file. This simplifies some of the code
572 (mainly for WIM mounting) and likely fixed a few problems, although it
576 Fixed problem when exporting images from XPRESS to LZX compressed WIM or
580 Enough changes to call it version 1.0.0!
582 Capturing a WIM directly from a NTFS volume, and applying a WIM directly
583 to a NTFS volume, is now supported.
585 Hard links and symbolic links have much improved support. They are
586 supported for WIM capture, WIM application, and mounted WIMs (you can
587 even make them on read-write mounted WIMs).
589 Alternate data streams are now supported on mounted WIMs through an
590 xattr or a Windows-style stream interface. Also they are supported when
591 capturing a WIM from NTFS or applying a WIM to NTFS.
593 Split WIMs are better supported. You may now apply an image directly
594 from a split WIM, mount an image from a split WIM read-only, or export
595 an image from a split WIM.
597 Using a capture configuration file is now supported (but not fully yet).
599 SHA1 message digests are checked in more places, so we can make sure
600 applied and captured data is correct.
602 Man pages have been updated and consolidated.
605 Fixed segfault when unmounting read-only WIM.
608 Support for joining and splitting WIMs.
609 Also, security data is now preserved by default.
612 Can now build with older gcc and system headers, like on CentOS 5.
615 Fixed bug that made it impossible to overwrite files in read-write
619 Write byte-order mark before WIM XML data. (imagex.exe requires this to