1 Only the most important changes more recent than version 0.6 are noted here.
4 Added support for "WIMBoot". On any platform, you can now capture a WIM
5 as WIMBoot-compatible. In addition, on Windows, specifically Windows
6 8.1 Update 1 and later, you can now apply a WIM archive in a special
7 mode that causes extracted files to be externally backed by the WIM
8 archive. See the documentation for the new '--wimboot' option to
9 wimcapture and wimapply, respectively, for more information.
11 The shared library version has been bumped up; however, there are only
12 a few incompatibilities:
14 - WIMLIB_COMPRESSION_TYPE_XPRESS is now 1 and
15 WIMLIB_COMPRESSION_TYPE_LZX is now 2 (so it's the same as
18 - 'struct wimlib_capture_config' has been removed. The library
19 now takes the path to the configuration file directly. This
20 affects wimlib_add_image(), wimlib_add_image_multisource(),
21 and wimlib_update_image(). However no code changes are
22 necessary if a NULL configuration was being used.
24 - Removed deprecated functions: some (de)compression functions,
25 wimlib_extract_files(), and wimlib_print_metadata().
27 Otherwise the API and ABI is the same.
30 Case-insensitive comparisons of strings (e.g. filenames) containing
31 UTF-16 codepoints above 32767 are now done correctly.
33 Fixed build failure on Mac OS X.
35 wimunmount now provides the '--new-image' option to cause changes to a
36 read-write mounted image to be committed as a new image rather than as
37 an update of the mounted image. (The corresponding new library flag is
38 WIMLIB_UNMOUNT_FLAG_NEW_IMAGE.)
40 The LZMS ("recovery") compression chunk size, or "dictionary size", may
41 now be up to 1 GiB (1,073,741,824 bytes).
43 The performance of LZX ("maximum") and LZMS ("recovery") compression
44 with large chunk sizes has been slightly improved.
47 Stored files with size exactly 4 GiB (4,294,967,296 bytes) are now
48 decompressed correctly.
50 Fixed a bug in the LZX compressor introduced in v1.5.3. The bug
51 occurred in an unlikely case, and due to validity checks it did not
52 affect successfully created archives.
54 Fixed a minor compatibility issue with the LZMS compressor and
55 decompressor. This is *not* the default compression type and was only
56 introduced in v1.6.0. In the unlikely event that you created an
57 LZMS-compressed WIM with v1.6.0 and a checksum error is reported when
58 applying it with v1.6.1, decompress it with v1.6.0 then compress it with
61 Memory usage for LZMS and LZX compression has been decreased.
63 wimextract now allows wildcard characters in paths specified on the
64 command line. Also, the '--strict-wildcards' option has been removed
65 and replaced with the inverse option '--nullglob'. See the
66 documentation for wimextract for more details and changes.
68 The wimlib_extract_files() function is now considered deprecated in
69 favor of wimlib_extract_paths().
71 Fixed more permissions problems when extracting files on Windows.
73 A new '--no-attributes' option has been added to wimapply and
74 wimextract. The library flag is WIMLIB_EXTRACT_FLAG_NO_ATTRIBUTES.
76 The default chunk size is now set correctly when changing the
77 compression type of a WIM, for example with 'wimoptimize'.
79 The '--metadata' option to wiminfo has been replaced with the
80 '--detailed' option to wimdir.
82 In relevant wimlib-imagex commands, '--solid' may now be used as an
83 alias for '--pack-streams'.
86 Support for extracting and updating the new version 3584 WIMs has been
87 added. These WIMs typically pack many streams ("files") together into a
88 single compressed resource, thereby saving space. This degrades the
89 performance of random access (such as that which occurs on a mounted
90 image), but optimizations have been implemented for extraction. These
91 new WIM files also typically use a new compression format (LZMS), which
92 is similar to LZMA and can offer a better compression ratio than LZX.
93 These new WIM files can be created using `wimcapture' with
94 the '--compress=lzms --pack-streams' options. Note: this new WIM format
95 is used by the Windows 8 web downloader, but important segments of the
96 raw '.esd' files are encrypted, so wimlib will not be able to extract
97 such files until they are first decrypted.
99 wimlib now supports extracting files and directories from a WIM image
100 based on a "listfile" that itself contains the list of paths to extract.
101 For `wimextract', the syntax is to specify @LISTFILE instead of a PATH,
102 and for the library itself, the new APIs are wimlib_extract_pathlist()
103 and wimlib_extract_paths(). Path globs containing wildcard characters
106 For searching WIM files, wimlib now has configurable case sensitivity.
107 The default on Windows is still case-insensitive and the default on
108 UNIX-like systems is still case-sensitive, but this can be overridden
109 on either platform through flags to wimlib_global_init(). For
110 `wimlib-imagex', the environmental variable WIMLIB_IMAGEX_IGNORE_CASE
111 can be set to 1 or 0 for case-insensitive or case-sensitive behavior,
114 Support for compression chunk sizes greater than the default of 32768
115 bytes has been added. A larger chunk size typically results in a better
116 compression ratio. However, the MS implementation is seemingly not
117 compatible with all chunk sizes, especially for LZX compression, so the
118 defaults remain unchanged, with the exception of the new LZMS-compressed
119 WIMs, which use a larger chunk size by default.
121 The compression/decompression API exported by wimlib has been changed.
122 Now one set of functions handles all supported compression formats.
124 `wimcapture' and `wimappend' will now display the progress of scanning
125 the directory tree to capture, in addition to the progress of writing
126 data to the WIM. The '--verbose' option no longer does anything. The
127 library API change for this is the addition of several members to
128 `struct wimlib_progress_info_scan' available to progress callbacks.
130 `mkwinpeimg' now correctly handles the '--start-script' option when the
131 start script is not in the working directory.
133 Sequential extraction, previously requested by using
134 WIMLIB_EXTRACT_FLAG_SEQUENTIAL, is now the default.
135 WIMLIB_EXTRACT_FLAG_FILE_ORDER can be used to get the old default
136 behavior (extract in file order).
139 The new LZX compressor added in v1.5.2 has been improved and is now
140 enabled by default, except when `wimcapture' or `wimappend' is run
141 *without* the '--compress' option, in which case the faster LZX
142 compressor is used (the same as before). This behavior is reasonably
143 consistent with ImageX which actually uses "fast" (XPRESS) compression
144 by default. In those cases, use '--compress=maximum' to explicitly
145 capture a WIM image using the new (slower but better) LZX compressor.
147 The '--compress-slow' option still exists to `wimlib-imagex optimize',
148 but its new behavior is to tweak the new LZX compressor even more to
149 produce an even better compression ratio at the cost of more time spent
152 `wimlib-imagex optimize' now supports the '--compress=TYPE' option,
153 which recompresses the WIM file using the specified compression TYPE.
154 The new library API function used for this is
155 wimlib_set_output_compression_type().
157 Added the wimlib_get_xml_data() function to allow library clients to
158 easily retrieve the raw XML data from a WIM file if needed.
160 Fixed a bug that could cause an error code to be incorrectly returned
161 when writing XML data containing a <WINDOWS> element.
163 Mounted WIM images will now correctly show the default file stream even
164 if appears in the alternate data stream entries of the corresponding WIM
168 Added a new experimental LZX compressor which can be enabled by passing
169 '--compress-slow' to `wimlib-imagex capture' or `wimlib-imagex
170 optimize'. (The latter is only applicable if the WIM is already
171 LZX-compressed and the '--recompress' option is also given.) The
172 experimental compressor is much slower but compresses the data slightly
173 more --- currently usually to within a fraction of a percent of the
174 results from WIMGAPI/ImageX.
176 A workaround has been added for compatibility with versions of WinPE
177 that interpret alternate data stream entries in the boot WIM
180 An alignment bug that caused a crash in the LZX decompressor on some
183 wimlib now attempts to clear the WIM_HDR_FLAG_WRITE_IN_PROGRESS flag in
184 the WIM header when restoring the previous state of a WIM it failed to
187 Added a workaround to avoid an access denied error on Windows when
188 replacing a WIM file that another process has opened.
191 wimlib can now open WinPE WIMs from WAIK v2.1, which had a quirk that
192 needed to be handled.
194 A bug in the interpretation of negative IMAGE indices in the
195 --update-of=[WIMFILE:]IMAGE option to `wimlib-imagex capture' and
196 `wimlib-imagex append' has been fixed.
198 A workaround has been added to successfully apply security descriptors
199 with empty DACLs when the NTFS-3g apply mode is being used with NTFS-3g
200 2013.1.13 or earlier.
202 `wimlib-imagex capture' can now accept the '--delta-from' option
206 Added support for "pipable" WIMs. Pipable WIMs allow capturing images
207 to standard output and applying images from standard input, but they are
208 not compatible with Microsoft's software and are not created by default.
209 See the documentation for --pipable flag of `wimlib-imagex capture' for
212 To better support incremental backups, added support for declaring an
213 image as a modified form of another image. See the documentation for
214 the '--update-of' option of `wimlib-imagex append' and `wimlib-imagex
217 Added supported for "delta" WIMs. See the documentation for the
218 '--delta-from' option of `wimlib-imagex capture'.
220 The library support for managing split WIMs has been changed to support
221 other arrangements, such as delta WIMs, and be easier to use. This
222 change is visible in `wimlib-imagex', which also can now accept the
223 '--ref' option multiple times, and also now supports "delta" WIMs as
226 wimlib now preserves WIM integrity tables by default, even if
227 WIMLIB_WRITE_FLAG_CHECK_INTEGRITY is not specified. This changes the
228 behavior of `wimlib-imagex' whenever the WIM being operated on contains
229 an integrity table and the '--check' option is not specified.
231 `wimlib-imagex capture' now creates LZX-compressed WIMs by default
232 (when --compress is not specified). This provides the best compression
233 ratio by default, which is usually what is desired, at a cost of some
236 `wimlib-imagex' now supports being invoked as wimCOMMAND, where COMMAND
237 is the command as in `wimlib-imagex COMMAND'; for example, it can be
238 invoked as `wimapply' as an alternative to `wimlib-imagex apply'. The
239 appropriate hard links are created in UNIX installations of
240 `wimlib-imagex', while for the Windows distribution of `wimlib-imagex',
241 batch files that emulate this behavior are generated.
243 Security descriptors are now extracted correctly on Windows.
245 Fixed archiving DOS names in NTFS-3g capture mode.
247 The extraction code has been rewritten and it will now be easier to
248 support new features on all supported backends (currently Win32, UNIX,
249 and NTFS-3g). For example, hard-linked extraction mode (--hardlink) is
250 now supported on all backends, not just UNIX.
252 `mkwinpeimg' now supports grabbing files from the WAIK supplement rather
253 than the WAIK itself.
255 wimlib_global_init() now, by default, attempts to acquire additional
256 privileges on Windows, so library clients need not do this.
258 This update bumps the shared library version number up to 9, since it is
259 not binary compatibible with previous releases.
262 Fixed bug in `wimlib-imagex export' that made it impossible to export an
263 image from a WIM that is readonly at the filesystem level.
265 Return error code rather than segfaulting when trying to list files from
266 a non-first part of a split WIM.
268 Joining a WIM will now preserve the RP_FIX and READONLY flags.
271 On Windows, paths given to wimlib-imagex are now treated case
274 Improved behavior regarding invalid filenames; in particular, on
275 Windows, wimlib-imagex will, when extracting, now omit (with an option
276 to override this default) filenames differing only in case, or filenames
277 containing characters not valid on Windows.
279 On Windows, wimlib now supports capturing and extracting long paths
280 (longer than the so-called MAX_PATH).
282 On Windows, `wimlib-imagex update' now acquires proper privileges when
283 running as an Administrator.
285 `wimlib-imagex update' will now complain if no image is specified when
286 trying to update a multi-image WIM.
288 `wimlib-imagex update' now supports specifying a single update command
289 directly on the command line using the --command option.
291 wimlib-imagex will now choose different units for progress messages,
292 depending on the amount of data that needs to be processed.
294 `wimlib-imagex append' will now generate a unique WIM image name if no
295 name is specified and the defaulted name already exists in the WIM.
297 wimlib now allows you to create unnamed WIM images, which can then only
298 be referred to by index.
300 wimlib now allows you to explicitly declare you want write access to a
301 WIM by providing the WIMLIB_OPEN_FLAG_WRITE_ACCESS flag to
304 wimlib now respects the WIM_HDR_FLAG_READONLY flag when set in the WIM
307 Progress callbacks have been added to wimlib's wimlib_update_image()
310 Added wimlib_get_wim_info(), wimlib_set_wim_info(),
311 wimlib_iterate_dir_tree(), and wimlib_iterate_lookup_table() functions
314 NTFS-3g capture now only warns about two conditions previously treated
317 Fixed a couple issues with using wimlib-imagex on UDF filesystems on
320 wimlib now correctly detects and returns an error when reading a WIM
321 image with a cyclic directory structure. (Fun fact: such a WIM will
322 crash Microsoft's software.)
325 Added new "extract" and "update" subcommands to wimlib-imagex, along
326 with associated APIs in the library. These commands are intended mainly
327 for Windows use but can be used on UNIX as well.
329 Many documentation improvements.
331 Fixed a bug in the Windows build where relative symbolic links were not
332 captured in reparse-point fixup mode.
334 Fixed a bug in the Windows build where file handles were left open to
335 the WIM file, causing `wimlib_imagex optimize' to fail in some cases.
337 Fixed a bug in the Windows build of wimlib-imagex where globbing
338 split-WIM parts could cause the program to crash.
340 Fixed a bug where the creation time of WIM images would be shown instead
341 of the last modification time.
343 With the Windows build it is now possible to restore a WIM containing
344 symbolic links as a non-Administrator; however you will receive warnings
345 about not being able to extract the symbolic links.
348 Capturing a WIM image should now be significantly faster in most cases
349 due to improved use of the operating system's cache and avoiding reading
350 files twice whenever possible.
352 The Windows build should now work on Windows XP.
354 The Windows build now supports capturing and restoring hidden,
355 compressed, sparse, and encrypted files.
357 The Windows build now supports capturing and applying WIM images from
358 filesystems other than NTFS (with some reduced functionality).
360 The Windows build now extracts short names correctly.
362 Added support for "reparse-point" fixups (i.e. fixing up of symbolic
363 links). See docs for --rpfix and --norpfix flags of `wimlib-imagex
364 capture' and `wimlib-imagex apply'.
366 The performance of splitting and joining WIMs should be slightly
369 The LZX and XPRESS compression and decompression functions are now
370 exported from the library.
373 Improvements and bugfixes for the Windows build.
375 Added --strict-acls options.
377 Fixed the way that wimlib determines the order of images in the WIM.
380 Since wimlib can now be used on Windows, wimlib's implementation of
381 ImageX has been renamed to wimlib-imagex to avoid confusion with
382 Microsoft's implementation of ImageX, which would have the same file
383 name ("imagex.exe"). If you really don't like this you can pass the
384 --with-imagex-progname option to `configure' to choose a different name,
385 or even simply rename the binary yourself (but the former way will
386 configure the man pages to use the chosen name).
388 Various bugs fixed in the Windows build. Mainly to do with capturing
389 and restoring alternate data streams correctly in weird cases, and
390 requesting the correct privileges when opening files. Also added the
391 --noacls options to wimlib-imagex capture, append, and apply.
393 Windows build again: FindFirstStreamW() and FindNextStreamW() are now
394 dynamically loaded, so this may make the library compatible with Windows
395 XP (however, there may still be other problems).
398 Added experimental support for native Windows builds. Binaries can be
399 downloaded from the SourceForge page.
401 --source-list option added to `imagex capture' and `imagex append'.
403 Better support for different character encodings.
406 Storing UNIX file owners, groups, and modes in WIM images is now
407 possible using `imagex capture' with the --unix-data flag.
409 Minor bug fixes and documentation fixes.
412 NTFS capture: Fixed capturing duplicate reparse points.
414 NTFS capture: Capture first unnamed stream if there are more than one
415 (print warning instead of error).
417 Allow multiple test cases to execute concurrently (e.g. make -j2 check).
420 Added --arch switch to mkwinpeimg script to support getting AMD64 WinPE
423 Update to work with ntfs-3g version 2013.1.13.
426 Fixed truncating file to shorter but non-zero length on read-write
429 Various code cleanups and minor documentation fixes.
432 LZX and XPRESS decompression have received some additional optimizations
433 and should now be even faster. (Although, they were already pretty
434 fast--- much faster than typical I/O speeds.)
436 Fixed a bug introduced in v1.2.1 that would cause a directory tree
437 containing hard links to be captured incorrectly in some cases.
440 By default, unmounting a read-write mounted WIM with 'imagex unmount
441 --commit' will now change the WIM in-place without needing to write the
442 entire WIM again. Use 'imagex unmount --commit --rebuild' to get the
445 'imagex unmount' no longer has a hard-coded limit of 10 minutes to wait
446 for a response from the daemon servicing the mounted WIM. Instead,
447 every second 'imagex unmount' will check if the daemon is still alive,
448 and keep waiting if so, otherwise terminate with an error.
450 'imagex unmount --commit' on a read-write mounted WIM will now print
451 progress information regarding the writing of new or modified streams
452 the WIM, just like when capturing or appending a WIM.
454 A small change has been made to XPRESS compression and it should improve
455 the compression ratio slightly.
457 A change was made that may improve performance slightly when applying a
458 WIM image to a NTFS volume.
460 Microsoft has managed to introduce even more bugs into their software,
461 and now the WIMs for Windows 8 have incorrect (too low) reference counts
462 for some streams. This is unsafe because such streams can be removed
463 when they are in actuality still referenced in the WIM (perhaps by a
464 different image). wimlib will now work around this problem by fixing
465 the stream reference counts. This is only done when wimlib_delete_image() is
466 called ('imagex delete') or when wimlib_mount_image() is called with
467 WIMLIB_MOUNT_FLAG_READWRITE ('imagex mountrw'). Please note that this
468 requires reading the metadata for all images in the WIM, so this will
469 make these operations noticably slower on WIMs with multiple images.
471 Various other bugfixes.
474 Appending images to a WIM is now be done by default without re-building
475 the whole WIM. Use the --rebuild flag to get the old behavior (which
476 was to re-build the entire WIM when a new image is appended).
478 A new command `imagex optimize' is now available to manually re-build a
479 WIM that has wasted space due to repeated appends.
481 Progress information has been improved, and now arbitrary callback
482 functions can be used to show the progress of a WIM operation.
484 A possible bug with changing the bootable image of a WIM was fixed.
486 Some advisory locking is now done to prevent two processes from
487 modifying a WIM at the same time (but only in some cases). For example,
488 you cannot mount two images from a WIM read-write at the same time.
490 Some functions have been reorganized:
491 * wimlib_mount() renamed to wimlib_mount_image().
492 * wimlib_unmount() renamed to wimlib_unmount_image().
493 * wimlib_overwrite_xml_and_header() removed as
494 wimlib_overwrite() suffices now.
495 * wimlib_apply_image_to_ntfs_volume() removed as
496 wimlib_extract_image() suffices now.
497 * wimlib_add_image_from_ntfs_volume() removed as
498 * wimlib_add_image() suffices now.
500 Previously, the soname of libwim.so has been 0.0.0, despite many
501 interface changes. The soname is now updated to 1.0.0 and will now be
502 updated each release.
505 Resources will now be compressed using multiple threads by default.
506 (This applies to `imagex capture', `imagex append', and `imagex
509 Some performance improvements in mounted WIMs.
511 More progress information is shown when capturing a WIM.
514 Lots of minor fixes, code cleanups, and some documentation updates.
515 Nothing in particular is really noteworthy.
518 LZX and XPRESS compression improvements.
520 Fixed calculation of Directory Count, File Count, Total Bytes, and Hard
521 Link Bytes of the WIM.
524 Fixed bug when capturing NTFS file with multiple named data streams.
526 Internally, we are now using inode structures, even though these don't
527 appear literally in the WIM file. This simplifies some of the code
528 (mainly for WIM mounting) and likely fixed a few problems, although it
532 Fixed problem when exporting images from XPRESS to LZX compressed WIM or
536 Enough changes to call it version 1.0.0!
538 Capturing a WIM directly from a NTFS volume, and applying a WIM directly
539 to a NTFS volume, is now supported.
541 Hard links and symbolic links have much improved support. They are
542 supported for WIM capture, WIM application, and mounted WIMs (you can
543 even make them on read-write mounted WIMs).
545 Alternate data streams are now supported on mounted WIMs through an
546 xattr or a Windows-style stream interface. Also they are supported when
547 capturing a WIM from NTFS or applying a WIM to NTFS.
549 Split WIMs are better supported. You may now apply an image directly
550 from a split WIM, mount an image from a split WIM read-only, or export
551 an image from a split WIM.
553 Using a capture configuration file is now supported (but not fully yet).
555 SHA1 message digests are checked in more places, so we can make sure
556 applied and captured data is correct.
558 Man pages have been updated and consolidated.
561 Fixed segfault when unmounting read-only WIM.
564 Support for joining and splitting WIMs.
565 Also, security data is now preserved by default.
568 Can now build with older gcc and system headers, like on CentOS 5.
571 Fixed bug that made it impossible to overwrite files in read-write
575 Write byte-order mark before WIM XML data. (imagex.exe requires this to