1 Only the most important changes more recent than version 0.6 are noted here.
4 Improved compatibility with version 3584 WIM / ESD files:
5 - Add support for reading and writing multiple solid blocks per
6 archive, which WIMGAPI/DISM can create when appending an image.
7 - Correctly create solid blocks larger than 4 GiB.
9 Performance improvements, including for extraction.
11 'add' commands passed to wimupdate will now replace existing
12 nondirectory files by default. Use the --no-replace option to get the
15 Added support for "WIMBoot" capture and extraction. See the
16 documentation for the new '--wimboot' option to wimcapture and wimapply
19 On UNIX-like systems, you can now backup and restore device nodes, named
20 pipes, and sockets. In addition, 32-bit user and group IDs are now
23 The way that UNIX data is stored in WIM files has been changed. If you
24 captured any WIMs with the --unix-data option, to upgrade them you'll
25 need to apply them with --unix-data using wimlib-imagex v1.6.2, then
26 re-capture them with --unix-data using this version.
28 wimlib now understands tagged metadata items, such as object IDs, that
29 can be stored in WIM directory entries.
31 Removed the --hardlink and --symlink options to wimapply, since I don't
32 think they are too useful and they got in the way of improving the code.
34 WIMs will now retain their GUIDs when rebuilt (e.g. with wimoptimize).
36 The 'mkwinpeimg' script now supports writing the ISO image to standard
39 The <ARCH> element in WIM XML data will now be exported correctly.
41 On Windows, sparse file attributes are no longer set on extracted files.
42 Oddly enough, this actually saves disk space in some cases.
44 On UNIX, configuring with --disable-xattr or --enable-xattr is no longer
45 supported. Mounting WIM images now always requires extended attribute
46 support. Use --without-fuse to disable support for mounting WIM images.
48 The shared library version has been bumped up. The main
49 incompatibilities are:
51 - WIMLIB_COMPRESSION_TYPE_XPRESS is now 1 and
52 WIMLIB_COMPRESSION_TYPE_LZX is now 2 (so it's the same as
55 - Progress functions, including their prototypes as well as how
56 they are provided to the library, have been changed.
58 - 'struct wimlib_capture_config' has been removed. The library
59 now takes the path to the configuration file directly. This
60 affects wimlib_add_image(), wimlib_add_image_multisource(),
61 and wimlib_update_image(). However no code changes are
62 necessary if a NULL configuration was being used.
64 - Removed deprecated functions: some (de)compression functions,
65 wimlib_extract_files(), and wimlib_print_metadata().
67 - Removed extraction flags: WIMLIB_EXTRACT_FLAG_HARDLINK,
68 WIMLIB_EXTRACT_FLAG_SYMLINK, WIMLIB_EXTRACT_FLAG_FILE_ORDER,
69 and WIMLIB_EXTRACT_FLAG_SEQUENTIAL.
71 - Removed progress messages:
72 WIMLIB_PROGRESS_MSG_APPLY_TIMESTAMPS,
73 WIMLIB_PROGRESS_MSG_EXTRACT_DIR_STRUCTURE_BEGIN,
74 WIMLIB_PROGRESS_MSG_EXTRACT_DIR_STRUCTURE_END. Numbering
77 - Removed some error codes. Numbering stays the same.
79 - Replaced WIMLIB_UNMOUNT_FLAG_LAZY with
80 WIMLIB_UNMOUNT_FLAG_FORCE.
82 - WIM paths passed to progress functions now have a leading
86 Case-insensitive comparisons of strings (e.g. filenames) containing
87 UTF-16 codepoints above 32767 are now done correctly.
89 Fixed build failure on Mac OS X.
91 wimunmount now provides the '--new-image' option to cause changes to a
92 read-write mounted image to be committed as a new image rather than as
93 an update of the mounted image. (The corresponding new library flag is
94 WIMLIB_UNMOUNT_FLAG_NEW_IMAGE.)
96 The LZMS ("recovery") compression chunk size, or "dictionary size", may
97 now be up to 1 GiB (1,073,741,824 bytes).
99 The performance of LZX ("maximum") and LZMS ("recovery") compression
100 with large chunk sizes has been slightly improved.
103 Stored files with size exactly 4 GiB (4,294,967,296 bytes) are now
104 decompressed correctly.
106 Fixed a bug in the LZX compressor introduced in v1.5.3. The bug
107 occurred in an unlikely case, and due to validity checks it did not
108 affect successfully created archives.
110 Fixed a minor compatibility issue with the LZMS compressor and
111 decompressor. This is *not* the default compression type and was only
112 introduced in v1.6.0. In the unlikely event that you created an
113 LZMS-compressed WIM with v1.6.0 and a checksum error is reported when
114 applying it with v1.6.1, decompress it with v1.6.0 then compress it with
117 Memory usage for LZMS and LZX compression has been decreased.
119 wimextract now allows wildcard characters in paths specified on the
120 command line. Also, the '--strict-wildcards' option has been removed
121 and replaced with the inverse option '--nullglob'. See the
122 documentation for wimextract for more details and changes.
124 The wimlib_extract_files() function is now considered deprecated in
125 favor of wimlib_extract_paths().
127 Fixed more permissions problems when extracting files on Windows.
129 A new '--no-attributes' option has been added to wimapply and
130 wimextract. The library flag is WIMLIB_EXTRACT_FLAG_NO_ATTRIBUTES.
132 The default chunk size is now set correctly when changing the
133 compression type of a WIM, for example with 'wimoptimize'.
135 The '--metadata' option to wiminfo has been replaced with the
136 '--detailed' option to wimdir.
138 In relevant wimlib-imagex commands, '--solid' may now be used as an
139 alias for '--pack-streams'.
142 Support for extracting and updating the new version 3584 WIMs has been
143 added. These WIMs typically pack many streams ("files") together into a
144 single compressed resource, thereby saving space. This degrades the
145 performance of random access (such as that which occurs on a mounted
146 image), but optimizations have been implemented for extraction. These
147 new WIM files also typically use a new compression format (LZMS), which
148 is similar to LZMA and can offer a better compression ratio than LZX.
149 These new WIM files can be created using `wimcapture' with
150 the '--compress=lzms --pack-streams' options. Note: this new WIM format
151 is used by the Windows 8 web downloader, but important segments of the
152 raw '.esd' files are encrypted, so wimlib will not be able to extract
153 such files until they are first decrypted.
155 wimlib now supports extracting files and directories from a WIM image
156 based on a "listfile" that itself contains the list of paths to extract.
157 For `wimextract', the syntax is to specify @LISTFILE instead of a PATH,
158 and for the library itself, the new APIs are wimlib_extract_pathlist()
159 and wimlib_extract_paths(). Path globs containing wildcard characters
162 For searching WIM files, wimlib now has configurable case sensitivity.
163 The default on Windows is still case-insensitive and the default on
164 UNIX-like systems is still case-sensitive, but this can be overridden
165 on either platform through flags to wimlib_global_init(). For
166 `wimlib-imagex', the environmental variable WIMLIB_IMAGEX_IGNORE_CASE
167 can be set to 1 or 0 for case-insensitive or case-sensitive behavior,
170 Support for compression chunk sizes greater than the default of 32768
171 bytes has been added. A larger chunk size typically results in a better
172 compression ratio. However, the MS implementation is seemingly not
173 compatible with all chunk sizes, especially for LZX compression, so the
174 defaults remain unchanged, with the exception of the new LZMS-compressed
175 WIMs, which use a larger chunk size by default.
177 The compression/decompression API exported by wimlib has been changed.
178 Now one set of functions handles all supported compression formats.
180 `wimcapture' and `wimappend' will now display the progress of scanning
181 the directory tree to capture, in addition to the progress of writing
182 data to the WIM. The '--verbose' option no longer does anything. The
183 library API change for this is the addition of several members to
184 `struct wimlib_progress_info_scan' available to progress callbacks.
186 `mkwinpeimg' now correctly handles the '--start-script' option when the
187 start script is not in the working directory.
189 Sequential extraction, previously requested by using
190 WIMLIB_EXTRACT_FLAG_SEQUENTIAL, is now the default.
191 WIMLIB_EXTRACT_FLAG_FILE_ORDER can be used to get the old default
192 behavior (extract in file order).
195 The new LZX compressor added in v1.5.2 has been improved and is now
196 enabled by default, except when `wimcapture' or `wimappend' is run
197 *without* the '--compress' option, in which case the faster LZX
198 compressor is used (the same as before). This behavior is reasonably
199 consistent with ImageX which actually uses "fast" (XPRESS) compression
200 by default. In those cases, use '--compress=maximum' to explicitly
201 capture a WIM image using the new (slower but better) LZX compressor.
203 The '--compress-slow' option still exists to `wimlib-imagex optimize',
204 but its new behavior is to tweak the new LZX compressor even more to
205 produce an even better compression ratio at the cost of more time spent
208 `wimlib-imagex optimize' now supports the '--compress=TYPE' option,
209 which recompresses the WIM file using the specified compression TYPE.
210 The new library API function used for this is
211 wimlib_set_output_compression_type().
213 Added the wimlib_get_xml_data() function to allow library clients to
214 easily retrieve the raw XML data from a WIM file if needed.
216 Fixed a bug that could cause an error code to be incorrectly returned
217 when writing XML data containing a <WINDOWS> element.
219 Mounted WIM images will now correctly show the default file stream even
220 if appears in the alternate data stream entries of the corresponding WIM
224 Added a new experimental LZX compressor which can be enabled by passing
225 '--compress-slow' to `wimlib-imagex capture' or `wimlib-imagex
226 optimize'. (The latter is only applicable if the WIM is already
227 LZX-compressed and the '--recompress' option is also given.) The
228 experimental compressor is much slower but compresses the data slightly
229 more --- currently usually to within a fraction of a percent of the
230 results from WIMGAPI/ImageX.
232 A workaround has been added for compatibility with versions of WinPE
233 that interpret alternate data stream entries in the boot WIM
236 An alignment bug that caused a crash in the LZX decompressor on some
239 wimlib now attempts to clear the WIM_HDR_FLAG_WRITE_IN_PROGRESS flag in
240 the WIM header when restoring the previous state of a WIM it failed to
243 Added a workaround to avoid an access denied error on Windows when
244 replacing a WIM file that another process has opened.
247 wimlib can now open WinPE WIMs from WAIK v2.1, which had a quirk that
248 needed to be handled.
250 A bug in the interpretation of negative IMAGE indices in the
251 --update-of=[WIMFILE:]IMAGE option to `wimlib-imagex capture' and
252 `wimlib-imagex append' has been fixed.
254 A workaround has been added to successfully apply security descriptors
255 with empty DACLs when the NTFS-3g apply mode is being used with NTFS-3g
256 2013.1.13 or earlier.
258 `wimlib-imagex capture' can now accept the '--delta-from' option
262 Added support for "pipable" WIMs. Pipable WIMs allow capturing images
263 to standard output and applying images from standard input, but they are
264 not compatible with Microsoft's software and are not created by default.
265 See the documentation for --pipable flag of `wimlib-imagex capture' for
268 To better support incremental backups, added support for declaring an
269 image as a modified form of another image. See the documentation for
270 the '--update-of' option of `wimlib-imagex append' and `wimlib-imagex
273 Added supported for "delta" WIMs. See the documentation for the
274 '--delta-from' option of `wimlib-imagex capture'.
276 The library support for managing split WIMs has been changed to support
277 other arrangements, such as delta WIMs, and be easier to use. This
278 change is visible in `wimlib-imagex', which also can now accept the
279 '--ref' option multiple times, and also now supports "delta" WIMs as
282 wimlib now preserves WIM integrity tables by default, even if
283 WIMLIB_WRITE_FLAG_CHECK_INTEGRITY is not specified. This changes the
284 behavior of `wimlib-imagex' whenever the WIM being operated on contains
285 an integrity table and the '--check' option is not specified.
287 `wimlib-imagex capture' now creates LZX-compressed WIMs by default
288 (when --compress is not specified). This provides the best compression
289 ratio by default, which is usually what is desired, at a cost of some
292 `wimlib-imagex' now supports being invoked as wimCOMMAND, where COMMAND
293 is the command as in `wimlib-imagex COMMAND'; for example, it can be
294 invoked as `wimapply' as an alternative to `wimlib-imagex apply'. The
295 appropriate hard links are created in UNIX installations of
296 `wimlib-imagex', while for the Windows distribution of `wimlib-imagex',
297 batch files that emulate this behavior are generated.
299 Security descriptors are now extracted correctly on Windows.
301 Fixed archiving DOS names in NTFS-3g capture mode.
303 The extraction code has been rewritten and it will now be easier to
304 support new features on all supported backends (currently Win32, UNIX,
305 and NTFS-3g). For example, hard-linked extraction mode (--hardlink) is
306 now supported on all backends, not just UNIX.
308 `mkwinpeimg' now supports grabbing files from the WAIK supplement rather
309 than the WAIK itself.
311 wimlib_global_init() now, by default, attempts to acquire additional
312 privileges on Windows, so library clients need not do this.
314 This update bumps the shared library version number up to 9, since it is
315 not binary compatibible with previous releases.
318 Fixed bug in `wimlib-imagex export' that made it impossible to export an
319 image from a WIM that is readonly at the filesystem level.
321 Return error code rather than segfaulting when trying to list files from
322 a non-first part of a split WIM.
324 Joining a WIM will now preserve the RP_FIX and READONLY flags.
327 On Windows, paths given to wimlib-imagex are now treated case
330 Improved behavior regarding invalid filenames; in particular, on
331 Windows, wimlib-imagex will, when extracting, now omit (with an option
332 to override this default) filenames differing only in case, or filenames
333 containing characters not valid on Windows.
335 On Windows, wimlib now supports capturing and extracting long paths
336 (longer than the so-called MAX_PATH).
338 On Windows, `wimlib-imagex update' now acquires proper privileges when
339 running as an Administrator.
341 `wimlib-imagex update' will now complain if no image is specified when
342 trying to update a multi-image WIM.
344 `wimlib-imagex update' now supports specifying a single update command
345 directly on the command line using the --command option.
347 wimlib-imagex will now choose different units for progress messages,
348 depending on the amount of data that needs to be processed.
350 `wimlib-imagex append' will now generate a unique WIM image name if no
351 name is specified and the defaulted name already exists in the WIM.
353 wimlib now allows you to create unnamed WIM images, which can then only
354 be referred to by index.
356 wimlib now allows you to explicitly declare you want write access to a
357 WIM by providing the WIMLIB_OPEN_FLAG_WRITE_ACCESS flag to
360 wimlib now respects the WIM_HDR_FLAG_READONLY flag when set in the WIM
363 Progress callbacks have been added to wimlib's wimlib_update_image()
366 Added wimlib_get_wim_info(), wimlib_set_wim_info(),
367 wimlib_iterate_dir_tree(), and wimlib_iterate_lookup_table() functions
370 NTFS-3g capture now only warns about two conditions previously treated
373 Fixed a couple issues with using wimlib-imagex on UDF filesystems on
376 wimlib now correctly detects and returns an error when reading a WIM
377 image with a cyclic directory structure. (Fun fact: such a WIM will
378 crash Microsoft's software.)
381 Added new "extract" and "update" subcommands to wimlib-imagex, along
382 with associated APIs in the library. These commands are intended mainly
383 for Windows use but can be used on UNIX as well.
385 Many documentation improvements.
387 Fixed a bug in the Windows build where relative symbolic links were not
388 captured in reparse-point fixup mode.
390 Fixed a bug in the Windows build where file handles were left open to
391 the WIM file, causing `wimlib_imagex optimize' to fail in some cases.
393 Fixed a bug in the Windows build of wimlib-imagex where globbing
394 split-WIM parts could cause the program to crash.
396 Fixed a bug where the creation time of WIM images would be shown instead
397 of the last modification time.
399 With the Windows build it is now possible to restore a WIM containing
400 symbolic links as a non-Administrator; however you will receive warnings
401 about not being able to extract the symbolic links.
404 Capturing a WIM image should now be significantly faster in most cases
405 due to improved use of the operating system's cache and avoiding reading
406 files twice whenever possible.
408 The Windows build should now work on Windows XP.
410 The Windows build now supports capturing and restoring hidden,
411 compressed, sparse, and encrypted files.
413 The Windows build now supports capturing and applying WIM images from
414 filesystems other than NTFS (with some reduced functionality).
416 The Windows build now extracts short names correctly.
418 Added support for "reparse-point" fixups (i.e. fixing up of symbolic
419 links). See docs for --rpfix and --norpfix flags of `wimlib-imagex
420 capture' and `wimlib-imagex apply'.
422 The performance of splitting and joining WIMs should be slightly
425 The LZX and XPRESS compression and decompression functions are now
426 exported from the library.
429 Improvements and bugfixes for the Windows build.
431 Added --strict-acls options.
433 Fixed the way that wimlib determines the order of images in the WIM.
436 Since wimlib can now be used on Windows, wimlib's implementation of
437 ImageX has been renamed to wimlib-imagex to avoid confusion with
438 Microsoft's implementation of ImageX, which would have the same file
439 name ("imagex.exe"). If you really don't like this you can pass the
440 --with-imagex-progname option to `configure' to choose a different name,
441 or even simply rename the binary yourself (but the former way will
442 configure the man pages to use the chosen name).
444 Various bugs fixed in the Windows build. Mainly to do with capturing
445 and restoring alternate data streams correctly in weird cases, and
446 requesting the correct privileges when opening files. Also added the
447 --noacls options to wimlib-imagex capture, append, and apply.
449 Windows build again: FindFirstStreamW() and FindNextStreamW() are now
450 dynamically loaded, so this may make the library compatible with Windows
451 XP (however, there may still be other problems).
454 Added experimental support for native Windows builds. Binaries can be
455 downloaded from the SourceForge page.
457 --source-list option added to `imagex capture' and `imagex append'.
459 Better support for different character encodings.
462 Storing UNIX file owners, groups, and modes in WIM images is now
463 possible using `imagex capture' with the --unix-data flag.
465 Minor bug fixes and documentation fixes.
468 NTFS capture: Fixed capturing duplicate reparse points.
470 NTFS capture: Capture first unnamed stream if there are more than one
471 (print warning instead of error).
473 Allow multiple test cases to execute concurrently (e.g. make -j2 check).
476 Added --arch switch to mkwinpeimg script to support getting AMD64 WinPE
479 Update to work with ntfs-3g version 2013.1.13.
482 Fixed truncating file to shorter but non-zero length on read-write
485 Various code cleanups and minor documentation fixes.
488 LZX and XPRESS decompression have received some additional optimizations
489 and should now be even faster. (Although, they were already pretty
490 fast--- much faster than typical I/O speeds.)
492 Fixed a bug introduced in v1.2.1 that would cause a directory tree
493 containing hard links to be captured incorrectly in some cases.
496 By default, unmounting a read-write mounted WIM with 'imagex unmount
497 --commit' will now change the WIM in-place without needing to write the
498 entire WIM again. Use 'imagex unmount --commit --rebuild' to get the
501 'imagex unmount' no longer has a hard-coded limit of 10 minutes to wait
502 for a response from the daemon servicing the mounted WIM. Instead,
503 every second 'imagex unmount' will check if the daemon is still alive,
504 and keep waiting if so, otherwise terminate with an error.
506 'imagex unmount --commit' on a read-write mounted WIM will now print
507 progress information regarding the writing of new or modified streams
508 the WIM, just like when capturing or appending a WIM.
510 A small change has been made to XPRESS compression and it should improve
511 the compression ratio slightly.
513 A change was made that may improve performance slightly when applying a
514 WIM image to a NTFS volume.
516 Microsoft has managed to introduce even more bugs into their software,
517 and now the WIMs for Windows 8 have incorrect (too low) reference counts
518 for some streams. This is unsafe because such streams can be removed
519 when they are in actuality still referenced in the WIM (perhaps by a
520 different image). wimlib will now work around this problem by fixing
521 the stream reference counts. This is only done when wimlib_delete_image() is
522 called ('imagex delete') or when wimlib_mount_image() is called with
523 WIMLIB_MOUNT_FLAG_READWRITE ('imagex mountrw'). Please note that this
524 requires reading the metadata for all images in the WIM, so this will
525 make these operations noticably slower on WIMs with multiple images.
527 Various other bugfixes.
530 Appending images to a WIM is now be done by default without re-building
531 the whole WIM. Use the --rebuild flag to get the old behavior (which
532 was to re-build the entire WIM when a new image is appended).
534 A new command `imagex optimize' is now available to manually re-build a
535 WIM that has wasted space due to repeated appends.
537 Progress information has been improved, and now arbitrary callback
538 functions can be used to show the progress of a WIM operation.
540 A possible bug with changing the bootable image of a WIM was fixed.
542 Some advisory locking is now done to prevent two processes from
543 modifying a WIM at the same time (but only in some cases). For example,
544 you cannot mount two images from a WIM read-write at the same time.
546 Some functions have been reorganized:
547 * wimlib_mount() renamed to wimlib_mount_image().
548 * wimlib_unmount() renamed to wimlib_unmount_image().
549 * wimlib_overwrite_xml_and_header() removed as
550 wimlib_overwrite() suffices now.
551 * wimlib_apply_image_to_ntfs_volume() removed as
552 wimlib_extract_image() suffices now.
553 * wimlib_add_image_from_ntfs_volume() removed as
554 * wimlib_add_image() suffices now.
556 Previously, the soname of libwim.so has been 0.0.0, despite many
557 interface changes. The soname is now updated to 1.0.0 and will now be
558 updated each release.
561 Resources will now be compressed using multiple threads by default.
562 (This applies to `imagex capture', `imagex append', and `imagex
565 Some performance improvements in mounted WIMs.
567 More progress information is shown when capturing a WIM.
570 Lots of minor fixes, code cleanups, and some documentation updates.
571 Nothing in particular is really noteworthy.
574 LZX and XPRESS compression improvements.
576 Fixed calculation of Directory Count, File Count, Total Bytes, and Hard
577 Link Bytes of the WIM.
580 Fixed bug when capturing NTFS file with multiple named data streams.
582 Internally, we are now using inode structures, even though these don't
583 appear literally in the WIM file. This simplifies some of the code
584 (mainly for WIM mounting) and likely fixed a few problems, although it
588 Fixed problem when exporting images from XPRESS to LZX compressed WIM or
592 Enough changes to call it version 1.0.0!
594 Capturing a WIM directly from a NTFS volume, and applying a WIM directly
595 to a NTFS volume, is now supported.
597 Hard links and symbolic links have much improved support. They are
598 supported for WIM capture, WIM application, and mounted WIMs (you can
599 even make them on read-write mounted WIMs).
601 Alternate data streams are now supported on mounted WIMs through an
602 xattr or a Windows-style stream interface. Also they are supported when
603 capturing a WIM from NTFS or applying a WIM to NTFS.
605 Split WIMs are better supported. You may now apply an image directly
606 from a split WIM, mount an image from a split WIM read-only, or export
607 an image from a split WIM.
609 Using a capture configuration file is now supported (but not fully yet).
611 SHA1 message digests are checked in more places, so we can make sure
612 applied and captured data is correct.
614 Man pages have been updated and consolidated.
617 Fixed segfault when unmounting read-only WIM.
620 Support for joining and splitting WIMs.
621 Also, security data is now preserved by default.
624 Can now build with older gcc and system headers, like on CentOS 5.
627 Fixed bug that made it impossible to overwrite files in read-write
631 Write byte-order mark before WIM XML data. (imagex.exe requires this to