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, you can now apply a WIM
6 archive in a special mode that causes extracted files to be externally
7 backed by the WIM archive. See the documentation for the new
8 '--wimboot' option to wimcapture and wimapply for more information.
10 'add' commands passed to wimupdate will now replace existing
11 nondirectory files by default. Use the --no-replace option to get the
14 Fixed reading out-of-order entries in lookup table of version 3584 WIM /
17 The 'mkwinpeimg' script now supports writing the ISO image to standard
20 The shared library version has been bumped up; however, there are only a
21 few incompatibilities:
23 - WIMLIB_COMPRESSION_TYPE_XPRESS is now 1 and
24 WIMLIB_COMPRESSION_TYPE_LZX is now 2 (so it's the same as
27 - 'struct wimlib_capture_config' has been removed. The library
28 now takes the path to the configuration file directly. This
29 affects wimlib_add_image(), wimlib_add_image_multisource(),
30 and wimlib_update_image(). However no code changes are
31 necessary if a NULL configuration was being used.
33 - Removed deprecated functions: some (de)compression functions,
34 wimlib_extract_files(), and wimlib_print_metadata().
36 - WIM paths passed to progress functions now have a leading
40 Case-insensitive comparisons of strings (e.g. filenames) containing
41 UTF-16 codepoints above 32767 are now done correctly.
43 Fixed build failure on Mac OS X.
45 wimunmount now provides the '--new-image' option to cause changes to a
46 read-write mounted image to be committed as a new image rather than as
47 an update of the mounted image. (The corresponding new library flag is
48 WIMLIB_UNMOUNT_FLAG_NEW_IMAGE.)
50 The LZMS ("recovery") compression chunk size, or "dictionary size", may
51 now be up to 1 GiB (1,073,741,824 bytes).
53 The performance of LZX ("maximum") and LZMS ("recovery") compression
54 with large chunk sizes has been slightly improved.
57 Stored files with size exactly 4 GiB (4,294,967,296 bytes) are now
58 decompressed correctly.
60 Fixed a bug in the LZX compressor introduced in v1.5.3. The bug
61 occurred in an unlikely case, and due to validity checks it did not
62 affect successfully created archives.
64 Fixed a minor compatibility issue with the LZMS compressor and
65 decompressor. This is *not* the default compression type and was only
66 introduced in v1.6.0. In the unlikely event that you created an
67 LZMS-compressed WIM with v1.6.0 and a checksum error is reported when
68 applying it with v1.6.1, decompress it with v1.6.0 then compress it with
71 Memory usage for LZMS and LZX compression has been decreased.
73 wimextract now allows wildcard characters in paths specified on the
74 command line. Also, the '--strict-wildcards' option has been removed
75 and replaced with the inverse option '--nullglob'. See the
76 documentation for wimextract for more details and changes.
78 The wimlib_extract_files() function is now considered deprecated in
79 favor of wimlib_extract_paths().
81 Fixed more permissions problems when extracting files on Windows.
83 A new '--no-attributes' option has been added to wimapply and
84 wimextract. The library flag is WIMLIB_EXTRACT_FLAG_NO_ATTRIBUTES.
86 The default chunk size is now set correctly when changing the
87 compression type of a WIM, for example with 'wimoptimize'.
89 The '--metadata' option to wiminfo has been replaced with the
90 '--detailed' option to wimdir.
92 In relevant wimlib-imagex commands, '--solid' may now be used as an
93 alias for '--pack-streams'.
96 Support for extracting and updating the new version 3584 WIMs has been
97 added. These WIMs typically pack many streams ("files") together into a
98 single compressed resource, thereby saving space. This degrades the
99 performance of random access (such as that which occurs on a mounted
100 image), but optimizations have been implemented for extraction. These
101 new WIM files also typically use a new compression format (LZMS), which
102 is similar to LZMA and can offer a better compression ratio than LZX.
103 These new WIM files can be created using `wimcapture' with
104 the '--compress=lzms --pack-streams' options. Note: this new WIM format
105 is used by the Windows 8 web downloader, but important segments of the
106 raw '.esd' files are encrypted, so wimlib will not be able to extract
107 such files until they are first decrypted.
109 wimlib now supports extracting files and directories from a WIM image
110 based on a "listfile" that itself contains the list of paths to extract.
111 For `wimextract', the syntax is to specify @LISTFILE instead of a PATH,
112 and for the library itself, the new APIs are wimlib_extract_pathlist()
113 and wimlib_extract_paths(). Path globs containing wildcard characters
116 For searching WIM files, wimlib now has configurable case sensitivity.
117 The default on Windows is still case-insensitive and the default on
118 UNIX-like systems is still case-sensitive, but this can be overridden
119 on either platform through flags to wimlib_global_init(). For
120 `wimlib-imagex', the environmental variable WIMLIB_IMAGEX_IGNORE_CASE
121 can be set to 1 or 0 for case-insensitive or case-sensitive behavior,
124 Support for compression chunk sizes greater than the default of 32768
125 bytes has been added. A larger chunk size typically results in a better
126 compression ratio. However, the MS implementation is seemingly not
127 compatible with all chunk sizes, especially for LZX compression, so the
128 defaults remain unchanged, with the exception of the new LZMS-compressed
129 WIMs, which use a larger chunk size by default.
131 The compression/decompression API exported by wimlib has been changed.
132 Now one set of functions handles all supported compression formats.
134 `wimcapture' and `wimappend' will now display the progress of scanning
135 the directory tree to capture, in addition to the progress of writing
136 data to the WIM. The '--verbose' option no longer does anything. The
137 library API change for this is the addition of several members to
138 `struct wimlib_progress_info_scan' available to progress callbacks.
140 `mkwinpeimg' now correctly handles the '--start-script' option when the
141 start script is not in the working directory.
143 Sequential extraction, previously requested by using
144 WIMLIB_EXTRACT_FLAG_SEQUENTIAL, is now the default.
145 WIMLIB_EXTRACT_FLAG_FILE_ORDER can be used to get the old default
146 behavior (extract in file order).
149 The new LZX compressor added in v1.5.2 has been improved and is now
150 enabled by default, except when `wimcapture' or `wimappend' is run
151 *without* the '--compress' option, in which case the faster LZX
152 compressor is used (the same as before). This behavior is reasonably
153 consistent with ImageX which actually uses "fast" (XPRESS) compression
154 by default. In those cases, use '--compress=maximum' to explicitly
155 capture a WIM image using the new (slower but better) LZX compressor.
157 The '--compress-slow' option still exists to `wimlib-imagex optimize',
158 but its new behavior is to tweak the new LZX compressor even more to
159 produce an even better compression ratio at the cost of more time spent
162 `wimlib-imagex optimize' now supports the '--compress=TYPE' option,
163 which recompresses the WIM file using the specified compression TYPE.
164 The new library API function used for this is
165 wimlib_set_output_compression_type().
167 Added the wimlib_get_xml_data() function to allow library clients to
168 easily retrieve the raw XML data from a WIM file if needed.
170 Fixed a bug that could cause an error code to be incorrectly returned
171 when writing XML data containing a <WINDOWS> element.
173 Mounted WIM images will now correctly show the default file stream even
174 if appears in the alternate data stream entries of the corresponding WIM
178 Added a new experimental LZX compressor which can be enabled by passing
179 '--compress-slow' to `wimlib-imagex capture' or `wimlib-imagex
180 optimize'. (The latter is only applicable if the WIM is already
181 LZX-compressed and the '--recompress' option is also given.) The
182 experimental compressor is much slower but compresses the data slightly
183 more --- currently usually to within a fraction of a percent of the
184 results from WIMGAPI/ImageX.
186 A workaround has been added for compatibility with versions of WinPE
187 that interpret alternate data stream entries in the boot WIM
190 An alignment bug that caused a crash in the LZX decompressor on some
193 wimlib now attempts to clear the WIM_HDR_FLAG_WRITE_IN_PROGRESS flag in
194 the WIM header when restoring the previous state of a WIM it failed to
197 Added a workaround to avoid an access denied error on Windows when
198 replacing a WIM file that another process has opened.
201 wimlib can now open WinPE WIMs from WAIK v2.1, which had a quirk that
202 needed to be handled.
204 A bug in the interpretation of negative IMAGE indices in the
205 --update-of=[WIMFILE:]IMAGE option to `wimlib-imagex capture' and
206 `wimlib-imagex append' has been fixed.
208 A workaround has been added to successfully apply security descriptors
209 with empty DACLs when the NTFS-3g apply mode is being used with NTFS-3g
210 2013.1.13 or earlier.
212 `wimlib-imagex capture' can now accept the '--delta-from' option
216 Added support for "pipable" WIMs. Pipable WIMs allow capturing images
217 to standard output and applying images from standard input, but they are
218 not compatible with Microsoft's software and are not created by default.
219 See the documentation for --pipable flag of `wimlib-imagex capture' for
222 To better support incremental backups, added support for declaring an
223 image as a modified form of another image. See the documentation for
224 the '--update-of' option of `wimlib-imagex append' and `wimlib-imagex
227 Added supported for "delta" WIMs. See the documentation for the
228 '--delta-from' option of `wimlib-imagex capture'.
230 The library support for managing split WIMs has been changed to support
231 other arrangements, such as delta WIMs, and be easier to use. This
232 change is visible in `wimlib-imagex', which also can now accept the
233 '--ref' option multiple times, and also now supports "delta" WIMs as
236 wimlib now preserves WIM integrity tables by default, even if
237 WIMLIB_WRITE_FLAG_CHECK_INTEGRITY is not specified. This changes the
238 behavior of `wimlib-imagex' whenever the WIM being operated on contains
239 an integrity table and the '--check' option is not specified.
241 `wimlib-imagex capture' now creates LZX-compressed WIMs by default
242 (when --compress is not specified). This provides the best compression
243 ratio by default, which is usually what is desired, at a cost of some
246 `wimlib-imagex' now supports being invoked as wimCOMMAND, where COMMAND
247 is the command as in `wimlib-imagex COMMAND'; for example, it can be
248 invoked as `wimapply' as an alternative to `wimlib-imagex apply'. The
249 appropriate hard links are created in UNIX installations of
250 `wimlib-imagex', while for the Windows distribution of `wimlib-imagex',
251 batch files that emulate this behavior are generated.
253 Security descriptors are now extracted correctly on Windows.
255 Fixed archiving DOS names in NTFS-3g capture mode.
257 The extraction code has been rewritten and it will now be easier to
258 support new features on all supported backends (currently Win32, UNIX,
259 and NTFS-3g). For example, hard-linked extraction mode (--hardlink) is
260 now supported on all backends, not just UNIX.
262 `mkwinpeimg' now supports grabbing files from the WAIK supplement rather
263 than the WAIK itself.
265 wimlib_global_init() now, by default, attempts to acquire additional
266 privileges on Windows, so library clients need not do this.
268 This update bumps the shared library version number up to 9, since it is
269 not binary compatibible with previous releases.
272 Fixed bug in `wimlib-imagex export' that made it impossible to export an
273 image from a WIM that is readonly at the filesystem level.
275 Return error code rather than segfaulting when trying to list files from
276 a non-first part of a split WIM.
278 Joining a WIM will now preserve the RP_FIX and READONLY flags.
281 On Windows, paths given to wimlib-imagex are now treated case
284 Improved behavior regarding invalid filenames; in particular, on
285 Windows, wimlib-imagex will, when extracting, now omit (with an option
286 to override this default) filenames differing only in case, or filenames
287 containing characters not valid on Windows.
289 On Windows, wimlib now supports capturing and extracting long paths
290 (longer than the so-called MAX_PATH).
292 On Windows, `wimlib-imagex update' now acquires proper privileges when
293 running as an Administrator.
295 `wimlib-imagex update' will now complain if no image is specified when
296 trying to update a multi-image WIM.
298 `wimlib-imagex update' now supports specifying a single update command
299 directly on the command line using the --command option.
301 wimlib-imagex will now choose different units for progress messages,
302 depending on the amount of data that needs to be processed.
304 `wimlib-imagex append' will now generate a unique WIM image name if no
305 name is specified and the defaulted name already exists in the WIM.
307 wimlib now allows you to create unnamed WIM images, which can then only
308 be referred to by index.
310 wimlib now allows you to explicitly declare you want write access to a
311 WIM by providing the WIMLIB_OPEN_FLAG_WRITE_ACCESS flag to
314 wimlib now respects the WIM_HDR_FLAG_READONLY flag when set in the WIM
317 Progress callbacks have been added to wimlib's wimlib_update_image()
320 Added wimlib_get_wim_info(), wimlib_set_wim_info(),
321 wimlib_iterate_dir_tree(), and wimlib_iterate_lookup_table() functions
324 NTFS-3g capture now only warns about two conditions previously treated
327 Fixed a couple issues with using wimlib-imagex on UDF filesystems on
330 wimlib now correctly detects and returns an error when reading a WIM
331 image with a cyclic directory structure. (Fun fact: such a WIM will
332 crash Microsoft's software.)
335 Added new "extract" and "update" subcommands to wimlib-imagex, along
336 with associated APIs in the library. These commands are intended mainly
337 for Windows use but can be used on UNIX as well.
339 Many documentation improvements.
341 Fixed a bug in the Windows build where relative symbolic links were not
342 captured in reparse-point fixup mode.
344 Fixed a bug in the Windows build where file handles were left open to
345 the WIM file, causing `wimlib_imagex optimize' to fail in some cases.
347 Fixed a bug in the Windows build of wimlib-imagex where globbing
348 split-WIM parts could cause the program to crash.
350 Fixed a bug where the creation time of WIM images would be shown instead
351 of the last modification time.
353 With the Windows build it is now possible to restore a WIM containing
354 symbolic links as a non-Administrator; however you will receive warnings
355 about not being able to extract the symbolic links.
358 Capturing a WIM image should now be significantly faster in most cases
359 due to improved use of the operating system's cache and avoiding reading
360 files twice whenever possible.
362 The Windows build should now work on Windows XP.
364 The Windows build now supports capturing and restoring hidden,
365 compressed, sparse, and encrypted files.
367 The Windows build now supports capturing and applying WIM images from
368 filesystems other than NTFS (with some reduced functionality).
370 The Windows build now extracts short names correctly.
372 Added support for "reparse-point" fixups (i.e. fixing up of symbolic
373 links). See docs for --rpfix and --norpfix flags of `wimlib-imagex
374 capture' and `wimlib-imagex apply'.
376 The performance of splitting and joining WIMs should be slightly
379 The LZX and XPRESS compression and decompression functions are now
380 exported from the library.
383 Improvements and bugfixes for the Windows build.
385 Added --strict-acls options.
387 Fixed the way that wimlib determines the order of images in the WIM.
390 Since wimlib can now be used on Windows, wimlib's implementation of
391 ImageX has been renamed to wimlib-imagex to avoid confusion with
392 Microsoft's implementation of ImageX, which would have the same file
393 name ("imagex.exe"). If you really don't like this you can pass the
394 --with-imagex-progname option to `configure' to choose a different name,
395 or even simply rename the binary yourself (but the former way will
396 configure the man pages to use the chosen name).
398 Various bugs fixed in the Windows build. Mainly to do with capturing
399 and restoring alternate data streams correctly in weird cases, and
400 requesting the correct privileges when opening files. Also added the
401 --noacls options to wimlib-imagex capture, append, and apply.
403 Windows build again: FindFirstStreamW() and FindNextStreamW() are now
404 dynamically loaded, so this may make the library compatible with Windows
405 XP (however, there may still be other problems).
408 Added experimental support for native Windows builds. Binaries can be
409 downloaded from the SourceForge page.
411 --source-list option added to `imagex capture' and `imagex append'.
413 Better support for different character encodings.
416 Storing UNIX file owners, groups, and modes in WIM images is now
417 possible using `imagex capture' with the --unix-data flag.
419 Minor bug fixes and documentation fixes.
422 NTFS capture: Fixed capturing duplicate reparse points.
424 NTFS capture: Capture first unnamed stream if there are more than one
425 (print warning instead of error).
427 Allow multiple test cases to execute concurrently (e.g. make -j2 check).
430 Added --arch switch to mkwinpeimg script to support getting AMD64 WinPE
433 Update to work with ntfs-3g version 2013.1.13.
436 Fixed truncating file to shorter but non-zero length on read-write
439 Various code cleanups and minor documentation fixes.
442 LZX and XPRESS decompression have received some additional optimizations
443 and should now be even faster. (Although, they were already pretty
444 fast--- much faster than typical I/O speeds.)
446 Fixed a bug introduced in v1.2.1 that would cause a directory tree
447 containing hard links to be captured incorrectly in some cases.
450 By default, unmounting a read-write mounted WIM with 'imagex unmount
451 --commit' will now change the WIM in-place without needing to write the
452 entire WIM again. Use 'imagex unmount --commit --rebuild' to get the
455 'imagex unmount' no longer has a hard-coded limit of 10 minutes to wait
456 for a response from the daemon servicing the mounted WIM. Instead,
457 every second 'imagex unmount' will check if the daemon is still alive,
458 and keep waiting if so, otherwise terminate with an error.
460 'imagex unmount --commit' on a read-write mounted WIM will now print
461 progress information regarding the writing of new or modified streams
462 the WIM, just like when capturing or appending a WIM.
464 A small change has been made to XPRESS compression and it should improve
465 the compression ratio slightly.
467 A change was made that may improve performance slightly when applying a
468 WIM image to a NTFS volume.
470 Microsoft has managed to introduce even more bugs into their software,
471 and now the WIMs for Windows 8 have incorrect (too low) reference counts
472 for some streams. This is unsafe because such streams can be removed
473 when they are in actuality still referenced in the WIM (perhaps by a
474 different image). wimlib will now work around this problem by fixing
475 the stream reference counts. This is only done when wimlib_delete_image() is
476 called ('imagex delete') or when wimlib_mount_image() is called with
477 WIMLIB_MOUNT_FLAG_READWRITE ('imagex mountrw'). Please note that this
478 requires reading the metadata for all images in the WIM, so this will
479 make these operations noticably slower on WIMs with multiple images.
481 Various other bugfixes.
484 Appending images to a WIM is now be done by default without re-building
485 the whole WIM. Use the --rebuild flag to get the old behavior (which
486 was to re-build the entire WIM when a new image is appended).
488 A new command `imagex optimize' is now available to manually re-build a
489 WIM that has wasted space due to repeated appends.
491 Progress information has been improved, and now arbitrary callback
492 functions can be used to show the progress of a WIM operation.
494 A possible bug with changing the bootable image of a WIM was fixed.
496 Some advisory locking is now done to prevent two processes from
497 modifying a WIM at the same time (but only in some cases). For example,
498 you cannot mount two images from a WIM read-write at the same time.
500 Some functions have been reorganized:
501 * wimlib_mount() renamed to wimlib_mount_image().
502 * wimlib_unmount() renamed to wimlib_unmount_image().
503 * wimlib_overwrite_xml_and_header() removed as
504 wimlib_overwrite() suffices now.
505 * wimlib_apply_image_to_ntfs_volume() removed as
506 wimlib_extract_image() suffices now.
507 * wimlib_add_image_from_ntfs_volume() removed as
508 * wimlib_add_image() suffices now.
510 Previously, the soname of libwim.so has been 0.0.0, despite many
511 interface changes. The soname is now updated to 1.0.0 and will now be
512 updated each release.
515 Resources will now be compressed using multiple threads by default.
516 (This applies to `imagex capture', `imagex append', and `imagex
519 Some performance improvements in mounted WIMs.
521 More progress information is shown when capturing a WIM.
524 Lots of minor fixes, code cleanups, and some documentation updates.
525 Nothing in particular is really noteworthy.
528 LZX and XPRESS compression improvements.
530 Fixed calculation of Directory Count, File Count, Total Bytes, and Hard
531 Link Bytes of the WIM.
534 Fixed bug when capturing NTFS file with multiple named data streams.
536 Internally, we are now using inode structures, even though these don't
537 appear literally in the WIM file. This simplifies some of the code
538 (mainly for WIM mounting) and likely fixed a few problems, although it
542 Fixed problem when exporting images from XPRESS to LZX compressed WIM or
546 Enough changes to call it version 1.0.0!
548 Capturing a WIM directly from a NTFS volume, and applying a WIM directly
549 to a NTFS volume, is now supported.
551 Hard links and symbolic links have much improved support. They are
552 supported for WIM capture, WIM application, and mounted WIMs (you can
553 even make them on read-write mounted WIMs).
555 Alternate data streams are now supported on mounted WIMs through an
556 xattr or a Windows-style stream interface. Also they are supported when
557 capturing a WIM from NTFS or applying a WIM to NTFS.
559 Split WIMs are better supported. You may now apply an image directly
560 from a split WIM, mount an image from a split WIM read-only, or export
561 an image from a split WIM.
563 Using a capture configuration file is now supported (but not fully yet).
565 SHA1 message digests are checked in more places, so we can make sure
566 applied and captured data is correct.
568 Man pages have been updated and consolidated.
571 Fixed segfault when unmounting read-only WIM.
574 Support for joining and splitting WIMs.
575 Also, security data is now preserved by default.
578 Can now build with older gcc and system headers, like on CentOS 5.
581 Fixed bug that made it impossible to overwrite files in read-write
585 Write byte-order mark before WIM XML data. (imagex.exe requires this to