1 Only the most important changes more recent than version 0.6 are noted here.
4 Improved compatibility with version 3584 WIM / ESD files.
6 Performance improvements, including for extraction.
8 'add' commands passed to wimupdate will now replace existing
9 nondirectory files by default. Use the --no-replace option to get the
12 Added support for "WIMBoot" capture and extraction. See the
13 documentation for the new '--wimboot' option to wimcapture and wimapply
16 On UNIX-like systems, you can now backup and restore device nodes, named
17 pipes, and sockets. In addition, 32-bit user and group IDs are now
20 The way that UNIX data is stored in WIM files has been changed. If you
21 captured any WIMs with the --unix-data option, to upgrade them you'll
22 need to apply them with --unix-data using wimlib-imagex v1.6.2, then
23 re-capture them with --unix-data using this version.
25 wimlib now understands tagged metadata items, such as object IDs, that
26 can be stored in WIM directory entries.
28 Removed the --hardlink and --symlink options to wimapply, since I don't
29 think they are too useful and they got in the way of improving the code.
31 WIMs will now retain their GUIDs when rebuilt (e.g. with wimoptimize).
33 The 'mkwinpeimg' script now supports writing the ISO image to standard
36 The <ARCH> element in WIM XML data will now be exported correctly.
38 On Windows, sparse file attributes are no longer set on extracted files.
39 Oddly enough, this actually saves disk space in some cases.
41 On UNIX, configuring with --disable-xattr or --enable-xattr is no longer
42 supported. Mounting WIM images now always requires extended attribute
43 support. Use --without-fuse to disable support for mounting WIM images.
45 The shared library version has been bumped up. The main
46 incompatibilities are:
48 - WIMLIB_COMPRESSION_TYPE_XPRESS is now 1 and
49 WIMLIB_COMPRESSION_TYPE_LZX is now 2 (so it's the same as
52 - Progress functions, including their prototypes as well as how
53 they are provided to the library, have been changed.
55 - 'struct wimlib_capture_config' has been removed. The library
56 now takes the path to the configuration file directly. This
57 affects wimlib_add_image(), wimlib_add_image_multisource(),
58 and wimlib_update_image(). However no code changes are
59 necessary if a NULL configuration was being used.
61 - Removed deprecated functions: some (de)compression functions,
62 wimlib_extract_files(), and wimlib_print_metadata().
64 - Removed extraction flags: WIMLIB_EXTRACT_FLAG_HARDLINK,
65 WIMLIB_EXTRACT_FLAG_SYMLINK, WIMLIB_EXTRACT_FLAG_FILE_ORDER,
66 and WIMLIB_EXTRACT_FLAG_SEQUENTIAL.
68 - Removed progress messages:
69 WIMLIB_PROGRESS_MSG_APPLY_TIMESTAMPS,
70 WIMLIB_PROGRESS_MSG_EXTRACT_DIR_STRUCTURE_BEGIN,
71 WIMLIB_PROGRESS_MSG_EXTRACT_DIR_STRUCTURE_END. Numbering
74 - Removed some error codes. Numbering stays the same.
76 - Replaced WIMLIB_UNMOUNT_FLAG_LAZY with
77 WIMLIB_UNMOUNT_FLAG_FORCE.
79 - WIM paths passed to progress functions now have a leading
83 Case-insensitive comparisons of strings (e.g. filenames) containing
84 UTF-16 codepoints above 32767 are now done correctly.
86 Fixed build failure on Mac OS X.
88 wimunmount now provides the '--new-image' option to cause changes to a
89 read-write mounted image to be committed as a new image rather than as
90 an update of the mounted image. (The corresponding new library flag is
91 WIMLIB_UNMOUNT_FLAG_NEW_IMAGE.)
93 The LZMS ("recovery") compression chunk size, or "dictionary size", may
94 now be up to 1 GiB (1,073,741,824 bytes).
96 The performance of LZX ("maximum") and LZMS ("recovery") compression
97 with large chunk sizes has been slightly improved.
100 Stored files with size exactly 4 GiB (4,294,967,296 bytes) are now
101 decompressed correctly.
103 Fixed a bug in the LZX compressor introduced in v1.5.3. The bug
104 occurred in an unlikely case, and due to validity checks it did not
105 affect successfully created archives.
107 Fixed a minor compatibility issue with the LZMS compressor and
108 decompressor. This is *not* the default compression type and was only
109 introduced in v1.6.0. In the unlikely event that you created an
110 LZMS-compressed WIM with v1.6.0 and a checksum error is reported when
111 applying it with v1.6.1, decompress it with v1.6.0 then compress it with
114 Memory usage for LZMS and LZX compression has been decreased.
116 wimextract now allows wildcard characters in paths specified on the
117 command line. Also, the '--strict-wildcards' option has been removed
118 and replaced with the inverse option '--nullglob'. See the
119 documentation for wimextract for more details and changes.
121 The wimlib_extract_files() function is now considered deprecated in
122 favor of wimlib_extract_paths().
124 Fixed more permissions problems when extracting files on Windows.
126 A new '--no-attributes' option has been added to wimapply and
127 wimextract. The library flag is WIMLIB_EXTRACT_FLAG_NO_ATTRIBUTES.
129 The default chunk size is now set correctly when changing the
130 compression type of a WIM, for example with 'wimoptimize'.
132 The '--metadata' option to wiminfo has been replaced with the
133 '--detailed' option to wimdir.
135 In relevant wimlib-imagex commands, '--solid' may now be used as an
136 alias for '--pack-streams'.
139 Support for extracting and updating the new version 3584 WIMs has been
140 added. These WIMs typically pack many streams ("files") together into a
141 single compressed resource, thereby saving space. This degrades the
142 performance of random access (such as that which occurs on a mounted
143 image), but optimizations have been implemented for extraction. These
144 new WIM files also typically use a new compression format (LZMS), which
145 is similar to LZMA and can offer a better compression ratio than LZX.
146 These new WIM files can be created using `wimcapture' with
147 the '--compress=lzms --pack-streams' options. Note: this new WIM format
148 is used by the Windows 8 web downloader, but important segments of the
149 raw '.esd' files are encrypted, so wimlib will not be able to extract
150 such files until they are first decrypted.
152 wimlib now supports extracting files and directories from a WIM image
153 based on a "listfile" that itself contains the list of paths to extract.
154 For `wimextract', the syntax is to specify @LISTFILE instead of a PATH,
155 and for the library itself, the new APIs are wimlib_extract_pathlist()
156 and wimlib_extract_paths(). Path globs containing wildcard characters
159 For searching WIM files, wimlib now has configurable case sensitivity.
160 The default on Windows is still case-insensitive and the default on
161 UNIX-like systems is still case-sensitive, but this can be overridden
162 on either platform through flags to wimlib_global_init(). For
163 `wimlib-imagex', the environmental variable WIMLIB_IMAGEX_IGNORE_CASE
164 can be set to 1 or 0 for case-insensitive or case-sensitive behavior,
167 Support for compression chunk sizes greater than the default of 32768
168 bytes has been added. A larger chunk size typically results in a better
169 compression ratio. However, the MS implementation is seemingly not
170 compatible with all chunk sizes, especially for LZX compression, so the
171 defaults remain unchanged, with the exception of the new LZMS-compressed
172 WIMs, which use a larger chunk size by default.
174 The compression/decompression API exported by wimlib has been changed.
175 Now one set of functions handles all supported compression formats.
177 `wimcapture' and `wimappend' will now display the progress of scanning
178 the directory tree to capture, in addition to the progress of writing
179 data to the WIM. The '--verbose' option no longer does anything. The
180 library API change for this is the addition of several members to
181 `struct wimlib_progress_info_scan' available to progress callbacks.
183 `mkwinpeimg' now correctly handles the '--start-script' option when the
184 start script is not in the working directory.
186 Sequential extraction, previously requested by using
187 WIMLIB_EXTRACT_FLAG_SEQUENTIAL, is now the default.
188 WIMLIB_EXTRACT_FLAG_FILE_ORDER can be used to get the old default
189 behavior (extract in file order).
192 The new LZX compressor added in v1.5.2 has been improved and is now
193 enabled by default, except when `wimcapture' or `wimappend' is run
194 *without* the '--compress' option, in which case the faster LZX
195 compressor is used (the same as before). This behavior is reasonably
196 consistent with ImageX which actually uses "fast" (XPRESS) compression
197 by default. In those cases, use '--compress=maximum' to explicitly
198 capture a WIM image using the new (slower but better) LZX compressor.
200 The '--compress-slow' option still exists to `wimlib-imagex optimize',
201 but its new behavior is to tweak the new LZX compressor even more to
202 produce an even better compression ratio at the cost of more time spent
205 `wimlib-imagex optimize' now supports the '--compress=TYPE' option,
206 which recompresses the WIM file using the specified compression TYPE.
207 The new library API function used for this is
208 wimlib_set_output_compression_type().
210 Added the wimlib_get_xml_data() function to allow library clients to
211 easily retrieve the raw XML data from a WIM file if needed.
213 Fixed a bug that could cause an error code to be incorrectly returned
214 when writing XML data containing a <WINDOWS> element.
216 Mounted WIM images will now correctly show the default file stream even
217 if appears in the alternate data stream entries of the corresponding WIM
221 Added a new experimental LZX compressor which can be enabled by passing
222 '--compress-slow' to `wimlib-imagex capture' or `wimlib-imagex
223 optimize'. (The latter is only applicable if the WIM is already
224 LZX-compressed and the '--recompress' option is also given.) The
225 experimental compressor is much slower but compresses the data slightly
226 more --- currently usually to within a fraction of a percent of the
227 results from WIMGAPI/ImageX.
229 A workaround has been added for compatibility with versions of WinPE
230 that interpret alternate data stream entries in the boot WIM
233 An alignment bug that caused a crash in the LZX decompressor on some
236 wimlib now attempts to clear the WIM_HDR_FLAG_WRITE_IN_PROGRESS flag in
237 the WIM header when restoring the previous state of a WIM it failed to
240 Added a workaround to avoid an access denied error on Windows when
241 replacing a WIM file that another process has opened.
244 wimlib can now open WinPE WIMs from WAIK v2.1, which had a quirk that
245 needed to be handled.
247 A bug in the interpretation of negative IMAGE indices in the
248 --update-of=[WIMFILE:]IMAGE option to `wimlib-imagex capture' and
249 `wimlib-imagex append' has been fixed.
251 A workaround has been added to successfully apply security descriptors
252 with empty DACLs when the NTFS-3g apply mode is being used with NTFS-3g
253 2013.1.13 or earlier.
255 `wimlib-imagex capture' can now accept the '--delta-from' option
259 Added support for "pipable" WIMs. Pipable WIMs allow capturing images
260 to standard output and applying images from standard input, but they are
261 not compatible with Microsoft's software and are not created by default.
262 See the documentation for --pipable flag of `wimlib-imagex capture' for
265 To better support incremental backups, added support for declaring an
266 image as a modified form of another image. See the documentation for
267 the '--update-of' option of `wimlib-imagex append' and `wimlib-imagex
270 Added supported for "delta" WIMs. See the documentation for the
271 '--delta-from' option of `wimlib-imagex capture'.
273 The library support for managing split WIMs has been changed to support
274 other arrangements, such as delta WIMs, and be easier to use. This
275 change is visible in `wimlib-imagex', which also can now accept the
276 '--ref' option multiple times, and also now supports "delta" WIMs as
279 wimlib now preserves WIM integrity tables by default, even if
280 WIMLIB_WRITE_FLAG_CHECK_INTEGRITY is not specified. This changes the
281 behavior of `wimlib-imagex' whenever the WIM being operated on contains
282 an integrity table and the '--check' option is not specified.
284 `wimlib-imagex capture' now creates LZX-compressed WIMs by default
285 (when --compress is not specified). This provides the best compression
286 ratio by default, which is usually what is desired, at a cost of some
289 `wimlib-imagex' now supports being invoked as wimCOMMAND, where COMMAND
290 is the command as in `wimlib-imagex COMMAND'; for example, it can be
291 invoked as `wimapply' as an alternative to `wimlib-imagex apply'. The
292 appropriate hard links are created in UNIX installations of
293 `wimlib-imagex', while for the Windows distribution of `wimlib-imagex',
294 batch files that emulate this behavior are generated.
296 Security descriptors are now extracted correctly on Windows.
298 Fixed archiving DOS names in NTFS-3g capture mode.
300 The extraction code has been rewritten and it will now be easier to
301 support new features on all supported backends (currently Win32, UNIX,
302 and NTFS-3g). For example, hard-linked extraction mode (--hardlink) is
303 now supported on all backends, not just UNIX.
305 `mkwinpeimg' now supports grabbing files from the WAIK supplement rather
306 than the WAIK itself.
308 wimlib_global_init() now, by default, attempts to acquire additional
309 privileges on Windows, so library clients need not do this.
311 This update bumps the shared library version number up to 9, since it is
312 not binary compatibible with previous releases.
315 Fixed bug in `wimlib-imagex export' that made it impossible to export an
316 image from a WIM that is readonly at the filesystem level.
318 Return error code rather than segfaulting when trying to list files from
319 a non-first part of a split WIM.
321 Joining a WIM will now preserve the RP_FIX and READONLY flags.
324 On Windows, paths given to wimlib-imagex are now treated case
327 Improved behavior regarding invalid filenames; in particular, on
328 Windows, wimlib-imagex will, when extracting, now omit (with an option
329 to override this default) filenames differing only in case, or filenames
330 containing characters not valid on Windows.
332 On Windows, wimlib now supports capturing and extracting long paths
333 (longer than the so-called MAX_PATH).
335 On Windows, `wimlib-imagex update' now acquires proper privileges when
336 running as an Administrator.
338 `wimlib-imagex update' will now complain if no image is specified when
339 trying to update a multi-image WIM.
341 `wimlib-imagex update' now supports specifying a single update command
342 directly on the command line using the --command option.
344 wimlib-imagex will now choose different units for progress messages,
345 depending on the amount of data that needs to be processed.
347 `wimlib-imagex append' will now generate a unique WIM image name if no
348 name is specified and the defaulted name already exists in the WIM.
350 wimlib now allows you to create unnamed WIM images, which can then only
351 be referred to by index.
353 wimlib now allows you to explicitly declare you want write access to a
354 WIM by providing the WIMLIB_OPEN_FLAG_WRITE_ACCESS flag to
357 wimlib now respects the WIM_HDR_FLAG_READONLY flag when set in the WIM
360 Progress callbacks have been added to wimlib's wimlib_update_image()
363 Added wimlib_get_wim_info(), wimlib_set_wim_info(),
364 wimlib_iterate_dir_tree(), and wimlib_iterate_lookup_table() functions
367 NTFS-3g capture now only warns about two conditions previously treated
370 Fixed a couple issues with using wimlib-imagex on UDF filesystems on
373 wimlib now correctly detects and returns an error when reading a WIM
374 image with a cyclic directory structure. (Fun fact: such a WIM will
375 crash Microsoft's software.)
378 Added new "extract" and "update" subcommands to wimlib-imagex, along
379 with associated APIs in the library. These commands are intended mainly
380 for Windows use but can be used on UNIX as well.
382 Many documentation improvements.
384 Fixed a bug in the Windows build where relative symbolic links were not
385 captured in reparse-point fixup mode.
387 Fixed a bug in the Windows build where file handles were left open to
388 the WIM file, causing `wimlib_imagex optimize' to fail in some cases.
390 Fixed a bug in the Windows build of wimlib-imagex where globbing
391 split-WIM parts could cause the program to crash.
393 Fixed a bug where the creation time of WIM images would be shown instead
394 of the last modification time.
396 With the Windows build it is now possible to restore a WIM containing
397 symbolic links as a non-Administrator; however you will receive warnings
398 about not being able to extract the symbolic links.
401 Capturing a WIM image should now be significantly faster in most cases
402 due to improved use of the operating system's cache and avoiding reading
403 files twice whenever possible.
405 The Windows build should now work on Windows XP.
407 The Windows build now supports capturing and restoring hidden,
408 compressed, sparse, and encrypted files.
410 The Windows build now supports capturing and applying WIM images from
411 filesystems other than NTFS (with some reduced functionality).
413 The Windows build now extracts short names correctly.
415 Added support for "reparse-point" fixups (i.e. fixing up of symbolic
416 links). See docs for --rpfix and --norpfix flags of `wimlib-imagex
417 capture' and `wimlib-imagex apply'.
419 The performance of splitting and joining WIMs should be slightly
422 The LZX and XPRESS compression and decompression functions are now
423 exported from the library.
426 Improvements and bugfixes for the Windows build.
428 Added --strict-acls options.
430 Fixed the way that wimlib determines the order of images in the WIM.
433 Since wimlib can now be used on Windows, wimlib's implementation of
434 ImageX has been renamed to wimlib-imagex to avoid confusion with
435 Microsoft's implementation of ImageX, which would have the same file
436 name ("imagex.exe"). If you really don't like this you can pass the
437 --with-imagex-progname option to `configure' to choose a different name,
438 or even simply rename the binary yourself (but the former way will
439 configure the man pages to use the chosen name).
441 Various bugs fixed in the Windows build. Mainly to do with capturing
442 and restoring alternate data streams correctly in weird cases, and
443 requesting the correct privileges when opening files. Also added the
444 --noacls options to wimlib-imagex capture, append, and apply.
446 Windows build again: FindFirstStreamW() and FindNextStreamW() are now
447 dynamically loaded, so this may make the library compatible with Windows
448 XP (however, there may still be other problems).
451 Added experimental support for native Windows builds. Binaries can be
452 downloaded from the SourceForge page.
454 --source-list option added to `imagex capture' and `imagex append'.
456 Better support for different character encodings.
459 Storing UNIX file owners, groups, and modes in WIM images is now
460 possible using `imagex capture' with the --unix-data flag.
462 Minor bug fixes and documentation fixes.
465 NTFS capture: Fixed capturing duplicate reparse points.
467 NTFS capture: Capture first unnamed stream if there are more than one
468 (print warning instead of error).
470 Allow multiple test cases to execute concurrently (e.g. make -j2 check).
473 Added --arch switch to mkwinpeimg script to support getting AMD64 WinPE
476 Update to work with ntfs-3g version 2013.1.13.
479 Fixed truncating file to shorter but non-zero length on read-write
482 Various code cleanups and minor documentation fixes.
485 LZX and XPRESS decompression have received some additional optimizations
486 and should now be even faster. (Although, they were already pretty
487 fast--- much faster than typical I/O speeds.)
489 Fixed a bug introduced in v1.2.1 that would cause a directory tree
490 containing hard links to be captured incorrectly in some cases.
493 By default, unmounting a read-write mounted WIM with 'imagex unmount
494 --commit' will now change the WIM in-place without needing to write the
495 entire WIM again. Use 'imagex unmount --commit --rebuild' to get the
498 'imagex unmount' no longer has a hard-coded limit of 10 minutes to wait
499 for a response from the daemon servicing the mounted WIM. Instead,
500 every second 'imagex unmount' will check if the daemon is still alive,
501 and keep waiting if so, otherwise terminate with an error.
503 'imagex unmount --commit' on a read-write mounted WIM will now print
504 progress information regarding the writing of new or modified streams
505 the WIM, just like when capturing or appending a WIM.
507 A small change has been made to XPRESS compression and it should improve
508 the compression ratio slightly.
510 A change was made that may improve performance slightly when applying a
511 WIM image to a NTFS volume.
513 Microsoft has managed to introduce even more bugs into their software,
514 and now the WIMs for Windows 8 have incorrect (too low) reference counts
515 for some streams. This is unsafe because such streams can be removed
516 when they are in actuality still referenced in the WIM (perhaps by a
517 different image). wimlib will now work around this problem by fixing
518 the stream reference counts. This is only done when wimlib_delete_image() is
519 called ('imagex delete') or when wimlib_mount_image() is called with
520 WIMLIB_MOUNT_FLAG_READWRITE ('imagex mountrw'). Please note that this
521 requires reading the metadata for all images in the WIM, so this will
522 make these operations noticably slower on WIMs with multiple images.
524 Various other bugfixes.
527 Appending images to a WIM is now be done by default without re-building
528 the whole WIM. Use the --rebuild flag to get the old behavior (which
529 was to re-build the entire WIM when a new image is appended).
531 A new command `imagex optimize' is now available to manually re-build a
532 WIM that has wasted space due to repeated appends.
534 Progress information has been improved, and now arbitrary callback
535 functions can be used to show the progress of a WIM operation.
537 A possible bug with changing the bootable image of a WIM was fixed.
539 Some advisory locking is now done to prevent two processes from
540 modifying a WIM at the same time (but only in some cases). For example,
541 you cannot mount two images from a WIM read-write at the same time.
543 Some functions have been reorganized:
544 * wimlib_mount() renamed to wimlib_mount_image().
545 * wimlib_unmount() renamed to wimlib_unmount_image().
546 * wimlib_overwrite_xml_and_header() removed as
547 wimlib_overwrite() suffices now.
548 * wimlib_apply_image_to_ntfs_volume() removed as
549 wimlib_extract_image() suffices now.
550 * wimlib_add_image_from_ntfs_volume() removed as
551 * wimlib_add_image() suffices now.
553 Previously, the soname of libwim.so has been 0.0.0, despite many
554 interface changes. The soname is now updated to 1.0.0 and will now be
555 updated each release.
558 Resources will now be compressed using multiple threads by default.
559 (This applies to `imagex capture', `imagex append', and `imagex
562 Some performance improvements in mounted WIMs.
564 More progress information is shown when capturing a WIM.
567 Lots of minor fixes, code cleanups, and some documentation updates.
568 Nothing in particular is really noteworthy.
571 LZX and XPRESS compression improvements.
573 Fixed calculation of Directory Count, File Count, Total Bytes, and Hard
574 Link Bytes of the WIM.
577 Fixed bug when capturing NTFS file with multiple named data streams.
579 Internally, we are now using inode structures, even though these don't
580 appear literally in the WIM file. This simplifies some of the code
581 (mainly for WIM mounting) and likely fixed a few problems, although it
585 Fixed problem when exporting images from XPRESS to LZX compressed WIM or
589 Enough changes to call it version 1.0.0!
591 Capturing a WIM directly from a NTFS volume, and applying a WIM directly
592 to a NTFS volume, is now supported.
594 Hard links and symbolic links have much improved support. They are
595 supported for WIM capture, WIM application, and mounted WIMs (you can
596 even make them on read-write mounted WIMs).
598 Alternate data streams are now supported on mounted WIMs through an
599 xattr or a Windows-style stream interface. Also they are supported when
600 capturing a WIM from NTFS or applying a WIM to NTFS.
602 Split WIMs are better supported. You may now apply an image directly
603 from a split WIM, mount an image from a split WIM read-only, or export
604 an image from a split WIM.
606 Using a capture configuration file is now supported (but not fully yet).
608 SHA1 message digests are checked in more places, so we can make sure
609 applied and captured data is correct.
611 Man pages have been updated and consolidated.
614 Fixed segfault when unmounting read-only WIM.
617 Support for joining and splitting WIMs.
618 Also, security data is now preserved by default.
621 Can now build with older gcc and system headers, like on CentOS 5.
624 Fixed bug that made it impossible to overwrite files in read-write
628 Write byte-order mark before WIM XML data. (imagex.exe requires this to
git://wimlib.net / wimlib / blob