1 Only the most important changes more recent than version 0.6 are noted here.
4 Support for extracting and updating the new version 3584 WIMs has been
5 added. These WIMs typically pack many streams ("files") together into a
6 single compressed resource, thereby saving space. This degrades the
7 performance of random access (such as that which occurs on a mounted
8 image), but optimizations have been implemented for extraction. These
9 new WIM files also typically use a new compression format (LZMS), which
10 is similar to LZMA and can offer a better compression ratio than LZX.
11 These new WIM files can be created with Dism using '/compress recovery',
12 or using `wimcapture' using '--pack-streams', although wimlib's LZMS
13 compressor is not yet very good, the latter is not recommended. Note:
14 this new WIM format is used by the Windows 8 web downloader, but
15 important segments of the raw '.esd' files are encrypted, so wimlib will
16 not be able to extract such files until they are first decrypted.
18 wimlib now supports extracting files and directories from a WIM image
19 based on a "listfile" that itself contains the list of paths to extract.
20 For `wimextract', the syntax is to specify @LISTFILE instead of a PATH,
21 and for the library itself, the new APIs are wimlib_extract_pathlist()
22 and wimlib_extract_paths(). Path globs containing wildcard characters
25 For searching WIM files, wimlib now has configurable case sensitivity.
26 The default on Windows is still case-insensitive and the default on
27 UNIX-like systems is still case-sensitive, but this can be overwridden
28 on either platform through flags to wimlib_global_init(). For
29 `wimlib-imagex', the environmental variable WIMLIB_IMAGEX_IGNORE_CASE
30 can be set to 1 or 0 for case-insensitive or case-sensitive behavior,
33 Support for compression chunk sizes greater than the default of 32768
34 bytes has been added. A larger chunk size typically results in a better
35 compression ratio. However, the MS implementation is seemingly not
36 compatible with all chunk sizes, especially for LZX compression, so the
37 defaults remain unchanged, with the exception of the new LZMS-compressed
38 WIMs, which use a larger chunk size by default.
40 The compression/decompression API exported by wimlib has been changed.
41 Now one set of functions handles all supported compression formats.
43 `wimcapture' and `wimappend' will now display the progress of scanning
44 the directory tree to capture, in addition to the progress of writing
45 data to the WIM. The '--verbose' option no longer does anything. The
46 library API change for this is the addition of several members to
47 `struct wimlib_progress_info_scan' available to progress callbacks.
49 `mkwinpeimg' now correctly handles the '--start-script' option when the
50 start script is not in the working directory.
52 Sequential extraction, previously requested by using
53 WIMLIB_EXTRACT_FLAG_SEQUENTIAL, is now the default.
54 WIMLIB_EXTRACT_FLAG_FILE_ORDER can be used to get the old default
55 behavior (extract in file order).
58 The new LZX compressor added in v1.5.2 has been improved and is now
59 enabled by default, except when `wimcapture' or `wimappend' is run
60 *without* the '--compress' option, in which case the faster LZX
61 compressor is used (the same as before). This behavior is reasonably
62 consistent with ImageX which actually uses "fast" (XPRESS) compression
63 by default. In those cases, use '--compress=maximum' to explicitly
64 capture a WIM image using the new (slower but better) LZX compressor.
66 The '--compress-slow' option still exists to `wimlib-imagex optimize',
67 but its new behavior is to tweak the new LZX compressor even more to
68 produce an even better compression ratio at the cost of more time spent
71 `wimlib-imagex optimize' now supports the '--compress=TYPE' option,
72 which recompresses the WIM file using the specified compression TYPE.
73 The new library API function used for this is
74 wimlib_set_output_compression_type().
76 Added the wimlib_get_xml_data() function to allow library clients to
77 easily retrieve the raw XML data from a WIM file if needed.
79 Fixed a bug that could cause an error code to be incorrectly returned
80 when writing XML data containing a <WINDOWS> element.
82 Mounted WIM images will now correctly show the default file stream even
83 if appears in the alternate data stream entries of the corresponding WIM
87 Added a new experimental LZX compressor which can be enabled by passing
88 '--compress-slow' to `wimlib-imagex capture' or `wimlib-imagex
89 optimize'. (The latter is only applicable if the WIM is already
90 LZX-compressed and the '--recompress' option is also given.) The
91 experimental compressor is much slower but compresses the data slightly
92 more --- currently usually to within a fraction of a percent of the
93 results from WIMGAPI/ImageX.
95 A workaround has been added for compatibility with versions of WinPE
96 that interpret alternate data stream entries in the boot WIM
99 An alignment bug that caused a crash in the LZX decompressor on some
102 wimlib now attempts to clear the WIM_HDR_FLAG_WRITE_IN_PROGRESS flag in
103 the WIM header when restoring the previous state of a WIM it failed to
106 Added a workaround to avoid an access denied error on Windows when
107 replacing a WIM file that another process has opened.
110 wimlib can now open WinPE WIMs from WAIK v2.1, which had a quirk that
111 needed to be handled.
113 A bug in the interpretation of negative IMAGE indices in the
114 --update-of=[WIMFILE:]IMAGE option to `wimlib-imagex capture' and
115 `wimlib-imagex append' has been fixed.
117 A workaround has been added to successfully apply security descriptors
118 with empty DACLs when the NTFS-3g apply mode is being used with NTFS-3g
119 2013.1.13 or earlier.
121 `wimlib-imagex capture' can now accept the '--delta-from' option
125 Added support for "pipable" WIMs. Pipable WIMs allow capturing images
126 to standard output and applying images from standard input, but they are
127 not compatible with Microsoft's software and are not created by default.
128 See the documentation for --pipable flag of `wimlib-imagex capture' for
131 To better support incremental backups, added support for declaring an
132 image as a modified form of another image. See the documentation for
133 the '--update-of' option of `wimlib-imagex append' and `wimlib-imagex
136 Added supported for "delta" WIMs. See the documentation for the
137 '--delta-from' option of `wimlib-imagex capture'.
139 The library support for managing split WIMs has been changed to support
140 other arrangements, such as delta WIMs, and be easier to use. This
141 change is visible in `wimlib-imagex', which also can now accept the
142 '--ref' option multiple times, and also now supports "delta" WIMs as
145 wimlib now preserves WIM integrity tables by default, even if
146 WIMLIB_WRITE_FLAG_CHECK_INTEGRITY is not specified. This changes the
147 behavior of `wimlib-imagex' whenever the WIM being operated on contains
148 an integrity table and the '--check' option is not specified.
150 `wimlib-imagex capture' now creates LZX-compressed WIMs by default
151 (when --compress is not specified). This provides the best compression
152 ratio by default, which is usually what is desired, at a cost of some
155 `wimlib-imagex' now supports being invoked as wimCOMMAND, where COMMAND
156 is the command as in `wimlib-imagex COMMAND'; for example, it can be
157 invoked as `wimapply' as an alternative to `wimlib-imagex apply'. The
158 appropriate hard links are created in UNIX installations of
159 `wimlib-imagex', while for the Windows distribution of `wimlib-imagex',
160 batch files that emulate this behavior are generated.
162 Security descriptors are now extracted correctly on Windows.
164 Fixed archiving DOS names in NTFS-3g capture mode.
166 The extraction code has been rewritten and it will now be easier to
167 support new features on all supported backends (currently Win32, UNIX,
168 and NTFS-3g). For example, hard-linked extraction mode (--hardlink) is
169 now supported on all backends, not just UNIX.
171 `mkwinpeimg' now supports grabbing files from the WAIK supplement rather
172 than the WAIK itself.
174 wimlib_global_init() now, by default, attempts to acquire additional
175 privileges on Windows, so library clients need not do this.
177 This update bumps the shared library version number up to 9, since it is
178 not binary compatibible with previous releases.
181 Fixed bug in `wimlib-imagex export' that made it impossible to export an
182 image from a WIM that is readonly at the filesystem level.
184 Return error code rather than segfaulting when trying to list files from
185 a non-first part of a split WIM.
187 Joining a WIM will now preserve the RP_FIX and READONLY flags.
190 On Windows, paths given to wimlib-imagex are now treated case
193 Improved behavior regarding invalid filenames; in particular, on
194 Windows, wimlib-imagex will, when extracting, now omit (with an option
195 to override this default) filenames differing only in case, or filenames
196 containing characters not valid on Windows.
198 On Windows, wimlib now supports capturing and extracting long paths
199 (longer than the so-called MAX_PATH).
201 On Windows, `wimlib-imagex update' now acquires proper privileges when
202 running as an Administrator.
204 `wimlib-imagex update' will now complain if no image is specified when
205 trying to update a multi-image WIM.
207 `wimlib-imagex update' now supports specifying a single update command
208 directly on the command line using the --command option.
210 wimlib-imagex will now choose different units for progress messages,
211 depending on the amount of data that needs to be processed.
213 `wimlib-imagex append' will now generate a unique WIM image name if no
214 name is specified and the defaulted name already exists in the WIM.
216 wimlib now allows you to create unnamed WIM images, which can then only
217 be referred to by index.
219 wimlib now allows you to explicitly declare you want write access to a
220 WIM by providing the WIMLIB_OPEN_FLAG_WRITE_ACCESS flag to
223 wimlib now respects the WIM_HDR_FLAG_READONLY flag when set in the WIM
226 Progress callbacks have been added to wimlib's wimlib_update_image()
229 Added wimlib_get_wim_info(), wimlib_set_wim_info(),
230 wimlib_iterate_dir_tree(), and wimlib_iterate_lookup_table() functions
233 NTFS-3g capture now only warns about two conditions previously treated
236 Fixed a couple issues with using wimlib-imagex on UDF filesystems on
239 wimlib now correctly detects and returns an error when reading a WIM
240 image with a cyclic directory structure. (Fun fact: such a WIM will
241 crash Microsoft's software.)
244 Added new "extract" and "update" subcommands to wimlib-imagex, along
245 with associated APIs in the library. These commands are intended mainly
246 for Windows use but can be used on UNIX as well.
248 Many documentation improvements.
250 Fixed a bug in the Windows build where relative symbolic links were not
251 captured in reparse-point fixup mode.
253 Fixed a bug in the Windows build where file handles were left open to
254 the WIM file, causing `wimlib_imagex optimize' to fail in some cases.
256 Fixed a bug in the Windows build of wimlib-imagex where globbing
257 split-WIM parts could cause the program to crash.
259 Fixed a bug where the creation time of WIM images would be shown instead
260 of the last modification time.
262 With the Windows build it is now possible to restore a WIM containing
263 symbolic links as a non-Administrator; however you will receive warnings
264 about not being able to extract the symbolic links.
267 Capturing a WIM image should now be significantly faster in most cases
268 due to improved use of the operating system's cache and avoiding reading
269 files twice whenever possible.
271 The Windows build should now work on Windows XP.
273 The Windows build now supports capturing and restoring hidden,
274 compressed, sparse, and encrypted files.
276 The Windows build now supports capturing and applying WIM images from
277 filesystems other than NTFS (with some reduced functionality).
279 The Windows build now extracts short names correctly.
281 Added support for "reparse-point" fixups (i.e. fixing up of symbolic
282 links). See docs for --rpfix and --norpfix flags of `wimlib-imagex
283 capture' and `wimlib-imagex apply'.
285 The performance of splitting and joining WIMs should be slightly
288 The LZX and XPRESS compression and decompression functions are now
289 exported from the library.
292 Improvements and bugfixes for the Windows build.
294 Added --strict-acls options.
296 Fixed the way that wimlib determines the order of images in the WIM.
299 Since wimlib can now be used on Windows, wimlib's implementation of
300 ImageX has been renamed to wimlib-imagex to avoid confusion with
301 Microsoft's implementation of ImageX, which would have the same file
302 name ("imagex.exe"). If you really don't like this you can pass the
303 --with-imagex-progname option to `configure' to choose a different name,
304 or even simply rename the binary yourself (but the former way will
305 configure the man pages to use the chosen name).
307 Various bugs fixed in the Windows build. Mainly to do with capturing
308 and restoring alternate data streams correctly in weird cases, and
309 requesting the correct privileges when opening files. Also added the
310 --noacls options to wimlib-imagex capture, append, and apply.
312 Windows build again: FindFirstStreamW() and FindNextStreamW() are now
313 dynamically loaded, so this may make the library compatible with Windows
314 XP (however, there may still be other problems).
317 Added experimental support for native Windows builds. Binaries can be
318 downloaded from the SourceForge page.
320 --source-list option added to `imagex capture' and `imagex append'.
322 Better support for different character encodings.
325 Storing UNIX file owners, groups, and modes in WIM images is now
326 possible using `imagex capture' with the --unix-data flag.
328 Minor bug fixes and documentation fixes.
331 NTFS capture: Fixed capturing duplicate reparse points.
333 NTFS capture: Capture first unnamed stream if there are more than one
334 (print warning instead of error).
336 Allow multiple test cases to execute concurrently (e.g. make -j2 check).
339 Added --arch switch to mkwinpeimg script to support getting AMD64 WinPE
342 Update to work with ntfs-3g version 2013.1.13.
345 Fixed truncating file to shorter but non-zero length on read-write
348 Various code cleanups and minor documentation fixes.
351 LZX and XPRESS decompression have received some additional optimizations
352 and should now be even faster. (Although, they were already pretty
353 fast--- much faster than typical I/O speeds.)
355 Fixed a bug introduced in v1.2.1 that would cause a directory tree
356 containing hard links to be captured incorrectly in some cases.
359 By default, unmounting a read-write mounted WIM with 'imagex unmount
360 --commit' will now change the WIM in-place without needing to write the
361 entire WIM again. Use 'imagex unmount --commit --rebuild' to get the
364 'imagex unmount' no longer has a hard-coded limit of 10 minutes to wait
365 for a response from the daemon servicing the mounted WIM. Instead,
366 every second 'imagex unmount' will check if the daemon is still alive,
367 and keep waiting if so, otherwise terminate with an error.
369 'imagex unmount --commit' on a read-write mounted WIM will now print
370 progress information regarding the writing of new or modified streams
371 the WIM, just like when capturing or appending a WIM.
373 A small change has been made to XPRESS compression and it should improve
374 the compression ratio slightly.
376 A change was made that may improve performance slightly when applying a
377 WIM image to a NTFS volume.
379 Microsoft has managed to introduce even more bugs into their software,
380 and now the WIMs for Windows 8 have incorrect (too low) reference counts
381 for some streams. This is unsafe because such streams can be removed
382 when they are in actuality still referenced in the WIM (perhaps by a
383 different image). wimlib will now work around this problem by fixing
384 the stream reference counts. This is only done when wimlib_delete_image() is
385 called ('imagex delete') or when wimlib_mount_image() is called with
386 WIMLIB_MOUNT_FLAG_READWRITE ('imagex mountrw'). Please note that this
387 requires reading the metadata for all images in the WIM, so this will
388 make these operations noticably slower on WIMs with multiple images.
390 Various other bugfixes.
393 Appending images to a WIM is now be done by default without re-building
394 the whole WIM. Use the --rebuild flag to get the old behavior (which
395 was to re-build the entire WIM when a new image is appended).
397 A new command `imagex optimize' is now available to manually re-build a
398 WIM that has wasted space due to repeated appends.
400 Progress information has been improved, and now arbitrary callback
401 functions can be used to show the progress of a WIM operation.
403 A possible bug with changing the bootable image of a WIM was fixed.
405 Some advisory locking is now done to prevent two processes from
406 modifying a WIM at the same time (but only in some cases). For example,
407 you cannot mount two images from a WIM read-write at the same time.
409 Some functions have been reorganized:
410 * wimlib_mount() renamed to wimlib_mount_image().
411 * wimlib_unmount() renamed to wimlib_unmount_image().
412 * wimlib_overwrite_xml_and_header() removed as
413 wimlib_overwrite() suffices now.
414 * wimlib_apply_image_to_ntfs_volume() removed as
415 wimlib_extract_image() suffices now.
416 * wimlib_add_image_from_ntfs_volume() removed as
417 * wimlib_add_image() suffices now.
419 Previously, the soname of libwim.so has been 0.0.0, despite many
420 interface changes. The soname is now updated to 1.0.0 and will now be
421 updated each release.
424 Resources will now be compressed using multiple threads by default.
425 (This applies to `imagex capture', `imagex append', and `imagex
428 Some performance improvements in mounted WIMs.
430 More progress information is shown when capturing a WIM.
433 Lots of minor fixes, code cleanups, and some documentation updates.
434 Nothing in particular is really noteworthy.
437 LZX and XPRESS compression improvements.
439 Fixed calculation of Directory Count, File Count, Total Bytes, and Hard
440 Link Bytes of the WIM.
443 Fixed bug when capturing NTFS file with multiple named data streams.
445 Internally, we are now using inode structures, even though these don't
446 appear literally in the WIM file. This simplifies some of the code
447 (mainly for WIM mounting) and likely fixed a few problems, although it
451 Fixed problem when exporting images from XPRESS to LZX compressed WIM or
455 Enough changes to call it version 1.0.0!
457 Capturing a WIM directly from a NTFS volume, and applying a WIM directly
458 to a NTFS volume, is now supported.
460 Hard links and symbolic links have much improved support. They are
461 supported for WIM capture, WIM application, and mounted WIMs (you can
462 even make them on read-write mounted WIMs).
464 Alternate data streams are now supported on mounted WIMs through an
465 xattr or a Windows-style stream interface. Also they are supported when
466 capturing a WIM from NTFS or applying a WIM to NTFS.
468 Split WIMs are better supported. You may now apply an image directly
469 from a split WIM, mount an image from a split WIM read-only, or export
470 an image from a split WIM.
472 Using a capture configuration file is now supported (but not fully yet).
474 SHA1 message digests are checked in more places, so we can make sure
475 applied and captured data is correct.
477 Man pages have been updated and consolidated.
480 Fixed segfault when unmounting read-only WIM.
483 Support for joining and splitting WIMs.
484 Also, security data is now preserved by default.
487 Can now build with older gcc and system headers, like on CentOS 5.
490 Fixed bug that made it impossible to overwrite files in read-write
494 Write byte-order mark before WIM XML data. (imagex.exe requires this to