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 small incompatibilities:
14 - wimlib_capture_config has been removed. The library now takes
15 the configuration file directly.
18 Case-insensitive comparisons of strings (e.g. filenames) containing
19 UTF-16 codepoints above 32767 are now done correctly.
21 Fixed build failure on Mac OS X.
23 wimunmount now provides the '--new-image' option to cause changes to a
24 read-write mounted image to be committed as a new image rather than as
25 an update of the mounted image. (The corresponding new library flag is
26 WIMLIB_UNMOUNT_FLAG_NEW_IMAGE.)
28 The LZMS ("recovery") compression chunk size, or "dictionary size", may
29 now be up to 1 GiB (1,073,741,824 bytes).
31 The performance of LZX ("maximum") and LZMS ("recovery") compression
32 with large chunk sizes has been slightly improved.
35 Stored files with size exactly 4 GiB (4,294,967,296 bytes) are now
36 decompressed correctly.
38 Fixed a bug in the LZX compressor introduced in v1.5.3. The bug
39 occurred in an unlikely case, and due to validity checks it did not
40 affect successfully created archives.
42 Fixed a minor compatibility issue with the LZMS compressor and
43 decompressor. This is *not* the default compression type and was only
44 introduced in v1.6.0. In the unlikely event that you created an
45 LZMS-compressed WIM with v1.6.0 and a checksum error is reported when
46 applying it with v1.6.1, decompress it with v1.6.0 then compress it with
49 Memory usage for LZMS and LZX compression has been decreased.
51 wimextract now allows wildcard characters in paths specified on the
52 command line. Also, the '--strict-wildcards' option has been removed
53 and replaced with the inverse option '--nullglob'. See the
54 documentation for wimextract for more details and changes.
56 The wimlib_extract_files() function is now considered deprecated in
57 favor of wimlib_extract_paths().
59 Fixed more permissions problems when extracting files on Windows.
61 A new '--no-attributes' option has been added to wimapply and
62 wimextract. The library flag is WIMLIB_EXTRACT_FLAG_NO_ATTRIBUTES.
64 The default chunk size is now set correctly when changing the
65 compression type of a WIM, for example with 'wimoptimize'.
67 The '--metadata' option to wiminfo has been replaced with the
68 '--detailed' option to wimdir.
70 In relevant wimlib-imagex commands, '--solid' may now be used as an
71 alias for '--pack-streams'.
74 Support for extracting and updating the new version 3584 WIMs has been
75 added. These WIMs typically pack many streams ("files") together into a
76 single compressed resource, thereby saving space. This degrades the
77 performance of random access (such as that which occurs on a mounted
78 image), but optimizations have been implemented for extraction. These
79 new WIM files also typically use a new compression format (LZMS), which
80 is similar to LZMA and can offer a better compression ratio than LZX.
81 These new WIM files can be created using `wimcapture' with
82 the '--compress=lzms --pack-streams' options. Note: this new WIM format
83 is used by the Windows 8 web downloader, but important segments of the
84 raw '.esd' files are encrypted, so wimlib will not be able to extract
85 such files until they are first decrypted.
87 wimlib now supports extracting files and directories from a WIM image
88 based on a "listfile" that itself contains the list of paths to extract.
89 For `wimextract', the syntax is to specify @LISTFILE instead of a PATH,
90 and for the library itself, the new APIs are wimlib_extract_pathlist()
91 and wimlib_extract_paths(). Path globs containing wildcard characters
94 For searching WIM files, wimlib now has configurable case sensitivity.
95 The default on Windows is still case-insensitive and the default on
96 UNIX-like systems is still case-sensitive, but this can be overridden
97 on either platform through flags to wimlib_global_init(). For
98 `wimlib-imagex', the environmental variable WIMLIB_IMAGEX_IGNORE_CASE
99 can be set to 1 or 0 for case-insensitive or case-sensitive behavior,
102 Support for compression chunk sizes greater than the default of 32768
103 bytes has been added. A larger chunk size typically results in a better
104 compression ratio. However, the MS implementation is seemingly not
105 compatible with all chunk sizes, especially for LZX compression, so the
106 defaults remain unchanged, with the exception of the new LZMS-compressed
107 WIMs, which use a larger chunk size by default.
109 The compression/decompression API exported by wimlib has been changed.
110 Now one set of functions handles all supported compression formats.
112 `wimcapture' and `wimappend' will now display the progress of scanning
113 the directory tree to capture, in addition to the progress of writing
114 data to the WIM. The '--verbose' option no longer does anything. The
115 library API change for this is the addition of several members to
116 `struct wimlib_progress_info_scan' available to progress callbacks.
118 `mkwinpeimg' now correctly handles the '--start-script' option when the
119 start script is not in the working directory.
121 Sequential extraction, previously requested by using
122 WIMLIB_EXTRACT_FLAG_SEQUENTIAL, is now the default.
123 WIMLIB_EXTRACT_FLAG_FILE_ORDER can be used to get the old default
124 behavior (extract in file order).
127 The new LZX compressor added in v1.5.2 has been improved and is now
128 enabled by default, except when `wimcapture' or `wimappend' is run
129 *without* the '--compress' option, in which case the faster LZX
130 compressor is used (the same as before). This behavior is reasonably
131 consistent with ImageX which actually uses "fast" (XPRESS) compression
132 by default. In those cases, use '--compress=maximum' to explicitly
133 capture a WIM image using the new (slower but better) LZX compressor.
135 The '--compress-slow' option still exists to `wimlib-imagex optimize',
136 but its new behavior is to tweak the new LZX compressor even more to
137 produce an even better compression ratio at the cost of more time spent
140 `wimlib-imagex optimize' now supports the '--compress=TYPE' option,
141 which recompresses the WIM file using the specified compression TYPE.
142 The new library API function used for this is
143 wimlib_set_output_compression_type().
145 Added the wimlib_get_xml_data() function to allow library clients to
146 easily retrieve the raw XML data from a WIM file if needed.
148 Fixed a bug that could cause an error code to be incorrectly returned
149 when writing XML data containing a <WINDOWS> element.
151 Mounted WIM images will now correctly show the default file stream even
152 if appears in the alternate data stream entries of the corresponding WIM
156 Added a new experimental LZX compressor which can be enabled by passing
157 '--compress-slow' to `wimlib-imagex capture' or `wimlib-imagex
158 optimize'. (The latter is only applicable if the WIM is already
159 LZX-compressed and the '--recompress' option is also given.) The
160 experimental compressor is much slower but compresses the data slightly
161 more --- currently usually to within a fraction of a percent of the
162 results from WIMGAPI/ImageX.
164 A workaround has been added for compatibility with versions of WinPE
165 that interpret alternate data stream entries in the boot WIM
168 An alignment bug that caused a crash in the LZX decompressor on some
171 wimlib now attempts to clear the WIM_HDR_FLAG_WRITE_IN_PROGRESS flag in
172 the WIM header when restoring the previous state of a WIM it failed to
175 Added a workaround to avoid an access denied error on Windows when
176 replacing a WIM file that another process has opened.
179 wimlib can now open WinPE WIMs from WAIK v2.1, which had a quirk that
180 needed to be handled.
182 A bug in the interpretation of negative IMAGE indices in the
183 --update-of=[WIMFILE:]IMAGE option to `wimlib-imagex capture' and
184 `wimlib-imagex append' has been fixed.
186 A workaround has been added to successfully apply security descriptors
187 with empty DACLs when the NTFS-3g apply mode is being used with NTFS-3g
188 2013.1.13 or earlier.
190 `wimlib-imagex capture' can now accept the '--delta-from' option
194 Added support for "pipable" WIMs. Pipable WIMs allow capturing images
195 to standard output and applying images from standard input, but they are
196 not compatible with Microsoft's software and are not created by default.
197 See the documentation for --pipable flag of `wimlib-imagex capture' for
200 To better support incremental backups, added support for declaring an
201 image as a modified form of another image. See the documentation for
202 the '--update-of' option of `wimlib-imagex append' and `wimlib-imagex
205 Added supported for "delta" WIMs. See the documentation for the
206 '--delta-from' option of `wimlib-imagex capture'.
208 The library support for managing split WIMs has been changed to support
209 other arrangements, such as delta WIMs, and be easier to use. This
210 change is visible in `wimlib-imagex', which also can now accept the
211 '--ref' option multiple times, and also now supports "delta" WIMs as
214 wimlib now preserves WIM integrity tables by default, even if
215 WIMLIB_WRITE_FLAG_CHECK_INTEGRITY is not specified. This changes the
216 behavior of `wimlib-imagex' whenever the WIM being operated on contains
217 an integrity table and the '--check' option is not specified.
219 `wimlib-imagex capture' now creates LZX-compressed WIMs by default
220 (when --compress is not specified). This provides the best compression
221 ratio by default, which is usually what is desired, at a cost of some
224 `wimlib-imagex' now supports being invoked as wimCOMMAND, where COMMAND
225 is the command as in `wimlib-imagex COMMAND'; for example, it can be
226 invoked as `wimapply' as an alternative to `wimlib-imagex apply'. The
227 appropriate hard links are created in UNIX installations of
228 `wimlib-imagex', while for the Windows distribution of `wimlib-imagex',
229 batch files that emulate this behavior are generated.
231 Security descriptors are now extracted correctly on Windows.
233 Fixed archiving DOS names in NTFS-3g capture mode.
235 The extraction code has been rewritten and it will now be easier to
236 support new features on all supported backends (currently Win32, UNIX,
237 and NTFS-3g). For example, hard-linked extraction mode (--hardlink) is
238 now supported on all backends, not just UNIX.
240 `mkwinpeimg' now supports grabbing files from the WAIK supplement rather
241 than the WAIK itself.
243 wimlib_global_init() now, by default, attempts to acquire additional
244 privileges on Windows, so library clients need not do this.
246 This update bumps the shared library version number up to 9, since it is
247 not binary compatibible with previous releases.
250 Fixed bug in `wimlib-imagex export' that made it impossible to export an
251 image from a WIM that is readonly at the filesystem level.
253 Return error code rather than segfaulting when trying to list files from
254 a non-first part of a split WIM.
256 Joining a WIM will now preserve the RP_FIX and READONLY flags.
259 On Windows, paths given to wimlib-imagex are now treated case
262 Improved behavior regarding invalid filenames; in particular, on
263 Windows, wimlib-imagex will, when extracting, now omit (with an option
264 to override this default) filenames differing only in case, or filenames
265 containing characters not valid on Windows.
267 On Windows, wimlib now supports capturing and extracting long paths
268 (longer than the so-called MAX_PATH).
270 On Windows, `wimlib-imagex update' now acquires proper privileges when
271 running as an Administrator.
273 `wimlib-imagex update' will now complain if no image is specified when
274 trying to update a multi-image WIM.
276 `wimlib-imagex update' now supports specifying a single update command
277 directly on the command line using the --command option.
279 wimlib-imagex will now choose different units for progress messages,
280 depending on the amount of data that needs to be processed.
282 `wimlib-imagex append' will now generate a unique WIM image name if no
283 name is specified and the defaulted name already exists in the WIM.
285 wimlib now allows you to create unnamed WIM images, which can then only
286 be referred to by index.
288 wimlib now allows you to explicitly declare you want write access to a
289 WIM by providing the WIMLIB_OPEN_FLAG_WRITE_ACCESS flag to
292 wimlib now respects the WIM_HDR_FLAG_READONLY flag when set in the WIM
295 Progress callbacks have been added to wimlib's wimlib_update_image()
298 Added wimlib_get_wim_info(), wimlib_set_wim_info(),
299 wimlib_iterate_dir_tree(), and wimlib_iterate_lookup_table() functions
302 NTFS-3g capture now only warns about two conditions previously treated
305 Fixed a couple issues with using wimlib-imagex on UDF filesystems on
308 wimlib now correctly detects and returns an error when reading a WIM
309 image with a cyclic directory structure. (Fun fact: such a WIM will
310 crash Microsoft's software.)
313 Added new "extract" and "update" subcommands to wimlib-imagex, along
314 with associated APIs in the library. These commands are intended mainly
315 for Windows use but can be used on UNIX as well.
317 Many documentation improvements.
319 Fixed a bug in the Windows build where relative symbolic links were not
320 captured in reparse-point fixup mode.
322 Fixed a bug in the Windows build where file handles were left open to
323 the WIM file, causing `wimlib_imagex optimize' to fail in some cases.
325 Fixed a bug in the Windows build of wimlib-imagex where globbing
326 split-WIM parts could cause the program to crash.
328 Fixed a bug where the creation time of WIM images would be shown instead
329 of the last modification time.
331 With the Windows build it is now possible to restore a WIM containing
332 symbolic links as a non-Administrator; however you will receive warnings
333 about not being able to extract the symbolic links.
336 Capturing a WIM image should now be significantly faster in most cases
337 due to improved use of the operating system's cache and avoiding reading
338 files twice whenever possible.
340 The Windows build should now work on Windows XP.
342 The Windows build now supports capturing and restoring hidden,
343 compressed, sparse, and encrypted files.
345 The Windows build now supports capturing and applying WIM images from
346 filesystems other than NTFS (with some reduced functionality).
348 The Windows build now extracts short names correctly.
350 Added support for "reparse-point" fixups (i.e. fixing up of symbolic
351 links). See docs for --rpfix and --norpfix flags of `wimlib-imagex
352 capture' and `wimlib-imagex apply'.
354 The performance of splitting and joining WIMs should be slightly
357 The LZX and XPRESS compression and decompression functions are now
358 exported from the library.
361 Improvements and bugfixes for the Windows build.
363 Added --strict-acls options.
365 Fixed the way that wimlib determines the order of images in the WIM.
368 Since wimlib can now be used on Windows, wimlib's implementation of
369 ImageX has been renamed to wimlib-imagex to avoid confusion with
370 Microsoft's implementation of ImageX, which would have the same file
371 name ("imagex.exe"). If you really don't like this you can pass the
372 --with-imagex-progname option to `configure' to choose a different name,
373 or even simply rename the binary yourself (but the former way will
374 configure the man pages to use the chosen name).
376 Various bugs fixed in the Windows build. Mainly to do with capturing
377 and restoring alternate data streams correctly in weird cases, and
378 requesting the correct privileges when opening files. Also added the
379 --noacls options to wimlib-imagex capture, append, and apply.
381 Windows build again: FindFirstStreamW() and FindNextStreamW() are now
382 dynamically loaded, so this may make the library compatible with Windows
383 XP (however, there may still be other problems).
386 Added experimental support for native Windows builds. Binaries can be
387 downloaded from the SourceForge page.
389 --source-list option added to `imagex capture' and `imagex append'.
391 Better support for different character encodings.
394 Storing UNIX file owners, groups, and modes in WIM images is now
395 possible using `imagex capture' with the --unix-data flag.
397 Minor bug fixes and documentation fixes.
400 NTFS capture: Fixed capturing duplicate reparse points.
402 NTFS capture: Capture first unnamed stream if there are more than one
403 (print warning instead of error).
405 Allow multiple test cases to execute concurrently (e.g. make -j2 check).
408 Added --arch switch to mkwinpeimg script to support getting AMD64 WinPE
411 Update to work with ntfs-3g version 2013.1.13.
414 Fixed truncating file to shorter but non-zero length on read-write
417 Various code cleanups and minor documentation fixes.
420 LZX and XPRESS decompression have received some additional optimizations
421 and should now be even faster. (Although, they were already pretty
422 fast--- much faster than typical I/O speeds.)
424 Fixed a bug introduced in v1.2.1 that would cause a directory tree
425 containing hard links to be captured incorrectly in some cases.
428 By default, unmounting a read-write mounted WIM with 'imagex unmount
429 --commit' will now change the WIM in-place without needing to write the
430 entire WIM again. Use 'imagex unmount --commit --rebuild' to get the
433 'imagex unmount' no longer has a hard-coded limit of 10 minutes to wait
434 for a response from the daemon servicing the mounted WIM. Instead,
435 every second 'imagex unmount' will check if the daemon is still alive,
436 and keep waiting if so, otherwise terminate with an error.
438 'imagex unmount --commit' on a read-write mounted WIM will now print
439 progress information regarding the writing of new or modified streams
440 the WIM, just like when capturing or appending a WIM.
442 A small change has been made to XPRESS compression and it should improve
443 the compression ratio slightly.
445 A change was made that may improve performance slightly when applying a
446 WIM image to a NTFS volume.
448 Microsoft has managed to introduce even more bugs into their software,
449 and now the WIMs for Windows 8 have incorrect (too low) reference counts
450 for some streams. This is unsafe because such streams can be removed
451 when they are in actuality still referenced in the WIM (perhaps by a
452 different image). wimlib will now work around this problem by fixing
453 the stream reference counts. This is only done when wimlib_delete_image() is
454 called ('imagex delete') or when wimlib_mount_image() is called with
455 WIMLIB_MOUNT_FLAG_READWRITE ('imagex mountrw'). Please note that this
456 requires reading the metadata for all images in the WIM, so this will
457 make these operations noticably slower on WIMs with multiple images.
459 Various other bugfixes.
462 Appending images to a WIM is now be done by default without re-building
463 the whole WIM. Use the --rebuild flag to get the old behavior (which
464 was to re-build the entire WIM when a new image is appended).
466 A new command `imagex optimize' is now available to manually re-build a
467 WIM that has wasted space due to repeated appends.
469 Progress information has been improved, and now arbitrary callback
470 functions can be used to show the progress of a WIM operation.
472 A possible bug with changing the bootable image of a WIM was fixed.
474 Some advisory locking is now done to prevent two processes from
475 modifying a WIM at the same time (but only in some cases). For example,
476 you cannot mount two images from a WIM read-write at the same time.
478 Some functions have been reorganized:
479 * wimlib_mount() renamed to wimlib_mount_image().
480 * wimlib_unmount() renamed to wimlib_unmount_image().
481 * wimlib_overwrite_xml_and_header() removed as
482 wimlib_overwrite() suffices now.
483 * wimlib_apply_image_to_ntfs_volume() removed as
484 wimlib_extract_image() suffices now.
485 * wimlib_add_image_from_ntfs_volume() removed as
486 * wimlib_add_image() suffices now.
488 Previously, the soname of libwim.so has been 0.0.0, despite many
489 interface changes. The soname is now updated to 1.0.0 and will now be
490 updated each release.
493 Resources will now be compressed using multiple threads by default.
494 (This applies to `imagex capture', `imagex append', and `imagex
497 Some performance improvements in mounted WIMs.
499 More progress information is shown when capturing a WIM.
502 Lots of minor fixes, code cleanups, and some documentation updates.
503 Nothing in particular is really noteworthy.
506 LZX and XPRESS compression improvements.
508 Fixed calculation of Directory Count, File Count, Total Bytes, and Hard
509 Link Bytes of the WIM.
512 Fixed bug when capturing NTFS file with multiple named data streams.
514 Internally, we are now using inode structures, even though these don't
515 appear literally in the WIM file. This simplifies some of the code
516 (mainly for WIM mounting) and likely fixed a few problems, although it
520 Fixed problem when exporting images from XPRESS to LZX compressed WIM or
524 Enough changes to call it version 1.0.0!
526 Capturing a WIM directly from a NTFS volume, and applying a WIM directly
527 to a NTFS volume, is now supported.
529 Hard links and symbolic links have much improved support. They are
530 supported for WIM capture, WIM application, and mounted WIMs (you can
531 even make them on read-write mounted WIMs).
533 Alternate data streams are now supported on mounted WIMs through an
534 xattr or a Windows-style stream interface. Also they are supported when
535 capturing a WIM from NTFS or applying a WIM to NTFS.
537 Split WIMs are better supported. You may now apply an image directly
538 from a split WIM, mount an image from a split WIM read-only, or export
539 an image from a split WIM.
541 Using a capture configuration file is now supported (but not fully yet).
543 SHA1 message digests are checked in more places, so we can make sure
544 applied and captured data is correct.
546 Man pages have been updated and consolidated.
549 Fixed segfault when unmounting read-only WIM.
552 Support for joining and splitting WIMs.
553 Also, security data is now preserved by default.
556 Can now build with older gcc and system headers, like on CentOS 5.
559 Fixed bug that made it impossible to overwrite files in read-write
563 Write byte-order mark before WIM XML data. (imagex.exe requires this to