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