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 Improved decompression, compression, and extraction performance.
11 'add' commands passed to wimupdate will now replace existing
12 nondirectory files by default. Use the --no-replace option to get the
15 In reparse-point fixup mode (the default for capture), symbolic links
16 and junctions that point outside the tree being captured are no longer
17 excluded from capture.
19 Added support for "WIMBoot" capture and extraction. See the
20 documentation for the new '--wimboot' option to wimcapture and wimapply
23 On UNIX-like systems, you can now backup and restore device nodes, named
24 pipes, and sockets. In addition, 32-bit user and group IDs are now
27 The way that UNIX data is stored in WIM files has been changed. If you
28 captured any WIMs with the --unix-data option, to upgrade them you'll
29 need to apply them with --unix-data using wimlib-imagex v1.6.2, then
30 re-capture them with --unix-data using this version.
32 wimlib now understands tagged metadata items, such as object IDs, that
33 can be stored in WIM directory entries.
35 Removed the --hardlink and --symlink options to wimapply, since I don't
36 think they are too useful and they got in the way of improving the code.
38 WIMs will now retain their GUIDs when rebuilt (e.g. with wimoptimize).
40 The 'mkwinpeimg' script now supports writing the ISO image to standard
43 The <ARCH> element in WIM XML data will now be exported correctly.
45 On Windows, sparse file attributes are no longer set on extracted files.
46 Oddly enough, this actually saves disk space in some cases.
48 On UNIX, configuring with --disable-xattr or --enable-xattr is no longer
49 supported. Mounting WIM images now always requires extended attribute
50 support. Use --without-fuse to disable support for mounting WIM images.
52 The shared library version has been bumped up. The main
53 incompatibilities are:
55 - WIMLIB_COMPRESSION_TYPE_XPRESS is now 1 and
56 WIMLIB_COMPRESSION_TYPE_LZX is now 2 (so it's the same as
59 - Progress functions, including their prototypes as well as how
60 they are provided to the library, have been changed.
62 - 'struct wimlib_capture_config' has been removed. The library
63 now takes the path to the configuration file directly. This
64 affects wimlib_add_image(), wimlib_add_image_multisource(),
65 and wimlib_update_image(). However no code changes are
66 necessary if a NULL configuration was being used.
68 - Removed deprecated functions: some (de)compression functions,
69 wimlib_extract_files(), and wimlib_print_metadata().
71 - Removed extraction flags: WIMLIB_EXTRACT_FLAG_HARDLINK,
72 WIMLIB_EXTRACT_FLAG_SYMLINK, WIMLIB_EXTRACT_FLAG_FILE_ORDER,
73 and WIMLIB_EXTRACT_FLAG_SEQUENTIAL.
75 - Removed progress messages:
76 WIMLIB_PROGRESS_MSG_APPLY_TIMESTAMPS,
77 WIMLIB_PROGRESS_MSG_EXTRACT_DIR_STRUCTURE_BEGIN,
78 WIMLIB_PROGRESS_MSG_EXTRACT_DIR_STRUCTURE_END. Numbering
81 - Removed some error codes. Numbering stays the same.
83 - Replaced WIMLIB_UNMOUNT_FLAG_LAZY with
84 WIMLIB_UNMOUNT_FLAG_FORCE.
86 - WIM paths passed to progress functions now have a leading
90 Case-insensitive comparisons of strings (e.g. filenames) containing
91 UTF-16 codepoints above 32767 are now done correctly.
93 Fixed build failure on Mac OS X.
95 wimunmount now provides the '--new-image' option to cause changes to a
96 read-write mounted image to be committed as a new image rather than as
97 an update of the mounted image. (The corresponding new library flag is
98 WIMLIB_UNMOUNT_FLAG_NEW_IMAGE.)
100 The LZMS ("recovery") compression chunk size, or "dictionary size", may
101 now be up to 1 GiB (1,073,741,824 bytes).
103 The performance of LZX ("maximum") and LZMS ("recovery") compression
104 with large chunk sizes has been slightly improved.
107 Stored files with size exactly 4 GiB (4,294,967,296 bytes) are now
108 decompressed correctly.
110 Fixed a bug in the LZX compressor introduced in v1.5.3. The bug
111 occurred in an unlikely case, and due to validity checks it did not
112 affect successfully created archives.
114 Fixed a minor compatibility issue with the LZMS compressor and
115 decompressor. This is *not* the default compression type and was only
116 introduced in v1.6.0. In the unlikely event that you created an
117 LZMS-compressed WIM with v1.6.0 and a checksum error is reported when
118 applying it with v1.6.1, decompress it with v1.6.0 then compress it with
121 Memory usage for LZMS and LZX compression has been decreased.
123 wimextract now allows wildcard characters in paths specified on the
124 command line. Also, the '--strict-wildcards' option has been removed
125 and replaced with the inverse option '--nullglob'. See the
126 documentation for wimextract for more details and changes.
128 The wimlib_extract_files() function is now considered deprecated in
129 favor of wimlib_extract_paths().
131 Fixed more permissions problems when extracting files on Windows.
133 A new '--no-attributes' option has been added to wimapply and
134 wimextract. The library flag is WIMLIB_EXTRACT_FLAG_NO_ATTRIBUTES.
136 The default chunk size is now set correctly when changing the
137 compression type of a WIM, for example with 'wimoptimize'.
139 The '--metadata' option to wiminfo has been replaced with the
140 '--detailed' option to wimdir.
142 In relevant wimlib-imagex commands, '--solid' may now be used as an
143 alias for '--pack-streams'.
146 Support for extracting and updating the new version 3584 WIMs has been
147 added. These WIMs typically pack many streams ("files") together into a
148 single compressed resource, thereby saving space. This degrades the
149 performance of random access (such as that which occurs on a mounted
150 image), but optimizations have been implemented for extraction. These
151 new WIM files also typically use a new compression format (LZMS), which
152 is similar to LZMA and can offer a better compression ratio than LZX.
153 These new WIM files can be created using `wimcapture' with
154 the '--compress=lzms --pack-streams' options. Note: this new WIM format
155 is used by the Windows 8 web downloader, but important segments of the
156 raw '.esd' files are encrypted, so wimlib will not be able to extract
157 such files until they are first decrypted.
159 wimlib now supports extracting files and directories from a WIM image
160 based on a "listfile" that itself contains the list of paths to extract.
161 For `wimextract', the syntax is to specify @LISTFILE instead of a PATH,
162 and for the library itself, the new APIs are wimlib_extract_pathlist()
163 and wimlib_extract_paths(). Path globs containing wildcard characters
166 For searching WIM files, wimlib now has configurable case sensitivity.
167 The default on Windows is still case-insensitive and the default on
168 UNIX-like systems is still case-sensitive, but this can be overridden
169 on either platform through flags to wimlib_global_init(). For
170 `wimlib-imagex', the environmental variable WIMLIB_IMAGEX_IGNORE_CASE
171 can be set to 1 or 0 for case-insensitive or case-sensitive behavior,
174 Support for compression chunk sizes greater than the default of 32768
175 bytes has been added. A larger chunk size typically results in a better
176 compression ratio. However, the MS implementation is seemingly not
177 compatible with all chunk sizes, especially for LZX compression, so the
178 defaults remain unchanged, with the exception of the new LZMS-compressed
179 WIMs, which use a larger chunk size by default.
181 The compression/decompression API exported by wimlib has been changed.
182 Now one set of functions handles all supported compression formats.
184 `wimcapture' and `wimappend' will now display the progress of scanning
185 the directory tree to capture, in addition to the progress of writing
186 data to the WIM. The '--verbose' option no longer does anything. The
187 library API change for this is the addition of several members to
188 `struct wimlib_progress_info_scan' available to progress callbacks.
190 `mkwinpeimg' now correctly handles the '--start-script' option when the
191 start script is not in the working directory.
193 Sequential extraction, previously requested by using
194 WIMLIB_EXTRACT_FLAG_SEQUENTIAL, is now the default.
195 WIMLIB_EXTRACT_FLAG_FILE_ORDER can be used to get the old default
196 behavior (extract in file order).
199 The new LZX compressor added in v1.5.2 has been improved and is now
200 enabled by default, except when `wimcapture' or `wimappend' is run
201 *without* the '--compress' option, in which case the faster LZX
202 compressor is used (the same as before). This behavior is reasonably
203 consistent with ImageX which actually uses "fast" (XPRESS) compression
204 by default. In those cases, use '--compress=maximum' to explicitly
205 capture a WIM image using the new (slower but better) LZX compressor.
207 The '--compress-slow' option still exists to `wimlib-imagex optimize',
208 but its new behavior is to tweak the new LZX compressor even more to
209 produce an even better compression ratio at the cost of more time spent
212 `wimlib-imagex optimize' now supports the '--compress=TYPE' option,
213 which recompresses the WIM file using the specified compression TYPE.
214 The new library API function used for this is
215 wimlib_set_output_compression_type().
217 Added the wimlib_get_xml_data() function to allow library clients to
218 easily retrieve the raw XML data from a WIM file if needed.
220 Fixed a bug that could cause an error code to be incorrectly returned
221 when writing XML data containing a <WINDOWS> element.
223 Mounted WIM images will now correctly show the default file stream even
224 if appears in the alternate data stream entries of the corresponding WIM
228 Added a new experimental LZX compressor which can be enabled by passing
229 '--compress-slow' to `wimlib-imagex capture' or `wimlib-imagex
230 optimize'. (The latter is only applicable if the WIM is already
231 LZX-compressed and the '--recompress' option is also given.) The
232 experimental compressor is much slower but compresses the data slightly
233 more --- currently usually to within a fraction of a percent of the
234 results from WIMGAPI/ImageX.
236 A workaround has been added for compatibility with versions of WinPE
237 that interpret alternate data stream entries in the boot WIM
240 An alignment bug that caused a crash in the LZX decompressor on some
243 wimlib now attempts to clear the WIM_HDR_FLAG_WRITE_IN_PROGRESS flag in
244 the WIM header when restoring the previous state of a WIM it failed to
247 Added a workaround to avoid an access denied error on Windows when
248 replacing a WIM file that another process has opened.
251 wimlib can now open WinPE WIMs from WAIK v2.1, which had a quirk that
252 needed to be handled.
254 A bug in the interpretation of negative IMAGE indices in the
255 --update-of=[WIMFILE:]IMAGE option to `wimlib-imagex capture' and
256 `wimlib-imagex append' has been fixed.
258 A workaround has been added to successfully apply security descriptors
259 with empty DACLs when the NTFS-3g apply mode is being used with NTFS-3g
260 2013.1.13 or earlier.
262 `wimlib-imagex capture' can now accept the '--delta-from' option
266 Added support for "pipable" WIMs. Pipable WIMs allow capturing images
267 to standard output and applying images from standard input, but they are
268 not compatible with Microsoft's software and are not created by default.
269 See the documentation for --pipable flag of `wimlib-imagex capture' for
272 To better support incremental backups, added support for declaring an
273 image as a modified form of another image. See the documentation for
274 the '--update-of' option of `wimlib-imagex append' and `wimlib-imagex
277 Added supported for "delta" WIMs. See the documentation for the
278 '--delta-from' option of `wimlib-imagex capture'.
280 The library support for managing split WIMs has been changed to support
281 other arrangements, such as delta WIMs, and be easier to use. This
282 change is visible in `wimlib-imagex', which also can now accept the
283 '--ref' option multiple times, and also now supports "delta" WIMs as
286 wimlib now preserves WIM integrity tables by default, even if
287 WIMLIB_WRITE_FLAG_CHECK_INTEGRITY is not specified. This changes the
288 behavior of `wimlib-imagex' whenever the WIM being operated on contains
289 an integrity table and the '--check' option is not specified.
291 `wimlib-imagex capture' now creates LZX-compressed WIMs by default
292 (when --compress is not specified). This provides the best compression
293 ratio by default, which is usually what is desired, at a cost of some
296 `wimlib-imagex' now supports being invoked as wimCOMMAND, where COMMAND
297 is the command as in `wimlib-imagex COMMAND'; for example, it can be
298 invoked as `wimapply' as an alternative to `wimlib-imagex apply'. The
299 appropriate hard links are created in UNIX installations of
300 `wimlib-imagex', while for the Windows distribution of `wimlib-imagex',
301 batch files that emulate this behavior are generated.
303 Security descriptors are now extracted correctly on Windows.
305 Fixed archiving DOS names in NTFS-3g capture mode.
307 The extraction code has been rewritten and it will now be easier to
308 support new features on all supported backends (currently Win32, UNIX,
309 and NTFS-3g). For example, hard-linked extraction mode (--hardlink) is
310 now supported on all backends, not just UNIX.
312 `mkwinpeimg' now supports grabbing files from the WAIK supplement rather
313 than the WAIK itself.
315 wimlib_global_init() now, by default, attempts to acquire additional
316 privileges on Windows, so library clients need not do this.
318 This update bumps the shared library version number up to 9, since it is
319 not binary compatibible with previous releases.
322 Fixed bug in `wimlib-imagex export' that made it impossible to export an
323 image from a WIM that is readonly at the filesystem level.
325 Return error code rather than segfaulting when trying to list files from
326 a non-first part of a split WIM.
328 Joining a WIM will now preserve the RP_FIX and READONLY flags.
331 On Windows, paths given to wimlib-imagex are now treated case
334 Improved behavior regarding invalid filenames; in particular, on
335 Windows, wimlib-imagex will, when extracting, now omit (with an option
336 to override this default) filenames differing only in case, or filenames
337 containing characters not valid on Windows.
339 On Windows, wimlib now supports capturing and extracting long paths
340 (longer than the so-called MAX_PATH).
342 On Windows, `wimlib-imagex update' now acquires proper privileges when
343 running as an Administrator.
345 `wimlib-imagex update' will now complain if no image is specified when
346 trying to update a multi-image WIM.
348 `wimlib-imagex update' now supports specifying a single update command
349 directly on the command line using the --command option.
351 wimlib-imagex will now choose different units for progress messages,
352 depending on the amount of data that needs to be processed.
354 `wimlib-imagex append' will now generate a unique WIM image name if no
355 name is specified and the defaulted name already exists in the WIM.
357 wimlib now allows you to create unnamed WIM images, which can then only
358 be referred to by index.
360 wimlib now allows you to explicitly declare you want write access to a
361 WIM by providing the WIMLIB_OPEN_FLAG_WRITE_ACCESS flag to
364 wimlib now respects the WIM_HDR_FLAG_READONLY flag when set in the WIM
367 Progress callbacks have been added to wimlib's wimlib_update_image()
370 Added wimlib_get_wim_info(), wimlib_set_wim_info(),
371 wimlib_iterate_dir_tree(), and wimlib_iterate_lookup_table() functions
374 NTFS-3g capture now only warns about two conditions previously treated
377 Fixed a couple issues with using wimlib-imagex on UDF filesystems on
380 wimlib now correctly detects and returns an error when reading a WIM
381 image with a cyclic directory structure. (Fun fact: such a WIM will
382 crash Microsoft's software.)
385 Added new "extract" and "update" subcommands to wimlib-imagex, along
386 with associated APIs in the library. These commands are intended mainly
387 for Windows use but can be used on UNIX as well.
389 Many documentation improvements.
391 Fixed a bug in the Windows build where relative symbolic links were not
392 captured in reparse-point fixup mode.
394 Fixed a bug in the Windows build where file handles were left open to
395 the WIM file, causing `wimlib_imagex optimize' to fail in some cases.
397 Fixed a bug in the Windows build of wimlib-imagex where globbing
398 split-WIM parts could cause the program to crash.
400 Fixed a bug where the creation time of WIM images would be shown instead
401 of the last modification time.
403 With the Windows build it is now possible to restore a WIM containing
404 symbolic links as a non-Administrator; however you will receive warnings
405 about not being able to extract the symbolic links.
408 Capturing a WIM image should now be significantly faster in most cases
409 due to improved use of the operating system's cache and avoiding reading
410 files twice whenever possible.
412 The Windows build should now work on Windows XP.
414 The Windows build now supports capturing and restoring hidden,
415 compressed, sparse, and encrypted files.
417 The Windows build now supports capturing and applying WIM images from
418 filesystems other than NTFS (with some reduced functionality).
420 The Windows build now extracts short names correctly.
422 Added support for "reparse-point" fixups (i.e. fixing up of symbolic
423 links). See docs for --rpfix and --norpfix flags of `wimlib-imagex
424 capture' and `wimlib-imagex apply'.
426 The performance of splitting and joining WIMs should be slightly
429 The LZX and XPRESS compression and decompression functions are now
430 exported from the library.
433 Improvements and bugfixes for the Windows build.
435 Added --strict-acls options.
437 Fixed the way that wimlib determines the order of images in the WIM.
440 Since wimlib can now be used on Windows, wimlib's implementation of
441 ImageX has been renamed to wimlib-imagex to avoid confusion with
442 Microsoft's implementation of ImageX, which would have the same file
443 name ("imagex.exe"). If you really don't like this you can pass the
444 --with-imagex-progname option to `configure' to choose a different name,
445 or even simply rename the binary yourself (but the former way will
446 configure the man pages to use the chosen name).
448 Various bugs fixed in the Windows build. Mainly to do with capturing
449 and restoring alternate data streams correctly in weird cases, and
450 requesting the correct privileges when opening files. Also added the
451 --noacls options to wimlib-imagex capture, append, and apply.
453 Windows build again: FindFirstStreamW() and FindNextStreamW() are now
454 dynamically loaded, so this may make the library compatible with Windows
455 XP (however, there may still be other problems).
458 Added experimental support for native Windows builds. Binaries can be
459 downloaded from the SourceForge page.
461 --source-list option added to `imagex capture' and `imagex append'.
463 Better support for different character encodings.
466 Storing UNIX file owners, groups, and modes in WIM images is now
467 possible using `imagex capture' with the --unix-data flag.
469 Minor bug fixes and documentation fixes.
472 NTFS capture: Fixed capturing duplicate reparse points.
474 NTFS capture: Capture first unnamed stream if there are more than one
475 (print warning instead of error).
477 Allow multiple test cases to execute concurrently (e.g. make -j2 check).
480 Added --arch switch to mkwinpeimg script to support getting AMD64 WinPE
483 Update to work with ntfs-3g version 2013.1.13.
486 Fixed truncating file to shorter but non-zero length on read-write
489 Various code cleanups and minor documentation fixes.
492 LZX and XPRESS decompression have received some additional optimizations
493 and should now be even faster. (Although, they were already pretty
494 fast--- much faster than typical I/O speeds.)
496 Fixed a bug introduced in v1.2.1 that would cause a directory tree
497 containing hard links to be captured incorrectly in some cases.
500 By default, unmounting a read-write mounted WIM with 'imagex unmount
501 --commit' will now change the WIM in-place without needing to write the
502 entire WIM again. Use 'imagex unmount --commit --rebuild' to get the
505 'imagex unmount' no longer has a hard-coded limit of 10 minutes to wait
506 for a response from the daemon servicing the mounted WIM. Instead,
507 every second 'imagex unmount' will check if the daemon is still alive,
508 and keep waiting if so, otherwise terminate with an error.
510 'imagex unmount --commit' on a read-write mounted WIM will now print
511 progress information regarding the writing of new or modified streams
512 the WIM, just like when capturing or appending a WIM.
514 A small change has been made to XPRESS compression and it should improve
515 the compression ratio slightly.
517 A change was made that may improve performance slightly when applying a
518 WIM image to a NTFS volume.
520 Microsoft has managed to introduce even more bugs into their software,
521 and now the WIMs for Windows 8 have incorrect (too low) reference counts
522 for some streams. This is unsafe because such streams can be removed
523 when they are in actuality still referenced in the WIM (perhaps by a
524 different image). wimlib will now work around this problem by fixing
525 the stream reference counts. This is only done when wimlib_delete_image() is
526 called ('imagex delete') or when wimlib_mount_image() is called with
527 WIMLIB_MOUNT_FLAG_READWRITE ('imagex mountrw'). Please note that this
528 requires reading the metadata for all images in the WIM, so this will
529 make these operations noticably slower on WIMs with multiple images.
531 Various other bugfixes.
534 Appending images to a WIM is now be done by default without re-building
535 the whole WIM. Use the --rebuild flag to get the old behavior (which
536 was to re-build the entire WIM when a new image is appended).
538 A new command `imagex optimize' is now available to manually re-build a
539 WIM that has wasted space due to repeated appends.
541 Progress information has been improved, and now arbitrary callback
542 functions can be used to show the progress of a WIM operation.
544 A possible bug with changing the bootable image of a WIM was fixed.
546 Some advisory locking is now done to prevent two processes from
547 modifying a WIM at the same time (but only in some cases). For example,
548 you cannot mount two images from a WIM read-write at the same time.
550 Some functions have been reorganized:
551 * wimlib_mount() renamed to wimlib_mount_image().
552 * wimlib_unmount() renamed to wimlib_unmount_image().
553 * wimlib_overwrite_xml_and_header() removed as
554 wimlib_overwrite() suffices now.
555 * wimlib_apply_image_to_ntfs_volume() removed as
556 wimlib_extract_image() suffices now.
557 * wimlib_add_image_from_ntfs_volume() removed as
558 * wimlib_add_image() suffices now.
560 Previously, the soname of libwim.so has been 0.0.0, despite many
561 interface changes. The soname is now updated to 1.0.0 and will now be
562 updated each release.
565 Resources will now be compressed using multiple threads by default.
566 (This applies to `imagex capture', `imagex append', and `imagex
569 Some performance improvements in mounted WIMs.
571 More progress information is shown when capturing a WIM.
574 Lots of minor fixes, code cleanups, and some documentation updates.
575 Nothing in particular is really noteworthy.
578 LZX and XPRESS compression improvements.
580 Fixed calculation of Directory Count, File Count, Total Bytes, and Hard
581 Link Bytes of the WIM.
584 Fixed bug when capturing NTFS file with multiple named data streams.
586 Internally, we are now using inode structures, even though these don't
587 appear literally in the WIM file. This simplifies some of the code
588 (mainly for WIM mounting) and likely fixed a few problems, although it
592 Fixed problem when exporting images from XPRESS to LZX compressed WIM or
596 Enough changes to call it version 1.0.0!
598 Capturing a WIM directly from a NTFS volume, and applying a WIM directly
599 to a NTFS volume, is now supported.
601 Hard links and symbolic links have much improved support. They are
602 supported for WIM capture, WIM application, and mounted WIMs (you can
603 even make them on read-write mounted WIMs).
605 Alternate data streams are now supported on mounted WIMs through an
606 xattr or a Windows-style stream interface. Also they are supported when
607 capturing a WIM from NTFS or applying a WIM to NTFS.
609 Split WIMs are better supported. You may now apply an image directly
610 from a split WIM, mount an image from a split WIM read-only, or export
611 an image from a split WIM.
613 Using a capture configuration file is now supported (but not fully yet).
615 SHA1 message digests are checked in more places, so we can make sure
616 applied and captured data is correct.
618 Man pages have been updated and consolidated.
621 Fixed segfault when unmounting read-only WIM.
624 Support for joining and splitting WIMs.
625 Also, security data is now preserved by default.
628 Can now build with older gcc and system headers, like on CentOS 5.
631 Fixed bug that made it impossible to overwrite files in read-write
635 Write byte-order mark before WIM XML data. (imagex.exe requires this to
git://wimlib.net / wimlib / blob