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