winpty/RELEASES.md

Next version

• The main project source was moved into a src directory for better code organization and to fix #51.

Version 0.2.0 (2015-11-13)

No changes to the API, but many small changes to the implementation. The big changes include:

• Support for 64-bit Cygwin and MSYS2
• Support for Windows 10
• Better Unicode support (especially East Asian languages)

Details:

• The configure script recognizes 64-bit Cygwin and MSYS2 environments and selects the appropriate compiler.
• winpty works much better with the upgraded console in Windows 10. The conhost.exe hang can still occur, but only with certain programs, and is much less likely to occur. With the new console, use Mark instead of SelectAll, for better performance. #31 #30 #53
• The UNIX adapter now calls setlocale(LC_ALL, "") to set the locale.
• Improved Unicode support. When a console is started with an East Asian code page, winpty now chooses an East Asian font rather than Consolas / Lucida Console. Selecting the right font helps synchronize character widths between the console and terminal. (It's not perfect, though.) #41
• winpty now more-or-less works with programs that change the screen buffer or resize the original screen buffer. If the screen buffer height changes, winpty switches to a "direct mode", where it makes no effort to track scrolling. In direct mode, it merely syncs snapshots of the console to the terminal. Caveats:
  • Changing the screen buffer (i.e. SetConsoleActiveScreenBuffer) breaks winpty on Windows 7. This problem can eventually be mitigated, but never completely fixed, due to Windows 7 bugginess.
  • Resizing the original screen buffer can hang conhost.exe on Windows 10. Enabling the legacy console is a workaround.
  • If a program changes the screen buffer and then exits, relying on the OS to restore the original screen buffer, that restoration probably will not happen with winpty. winpty's behavior can probably be improved here.
• Improved color handling:
  • DkGray-on-Black text was previously hiddenly completely. Now it is output as DkGray, with a fallback to LtGray on terminals that don't recognize the intense colors. #39.
  • The console is always initialized to LtGray-on-Black, regardless of the user setting, which matches the console color heuristic, which translates LtGray-on-Black to "reset SGR parameters."
• Shift-Tab is recognized correctly now. #19
• Add a --version argument to winpty-agent.exe and the UNIX adapter. The argument reports the nominal version (i.e. the VERSION.txt) file, with a "VERSION_SUFFIX" appended (defaulted to -dev), and a git commit hash, if the git command successfully reports a hash during the build. The git command is invoked by either make or gyp.
• The agent now combines ReadConsoleOutputW calls when it polls the console buffer for changes, which may slightly reduce its CPU overhead. #44.
• A gyp file is added to help compile with MSVC.
• The code can now be compiled as C++11 code, though it isn't by default. bde8922e08
• If winpty can't create a new window station, it charges ahead rather than aborting. This situation might happen if winpty were started from an SSH session.
• Debugging improvements:
  • WINPTYDBG is renamed to WINPTY_DEBUG, and a new WINPTY_SHOW_CONSOLE variable keeps the underlying console visible.
  • A winpty-debugserver.exe program is built and shipped by default. It collects the trace output enabled with WINPTY_DEBUG.
• The Makefile build of winpty now compiles winpty-agent.exe and winpty.dll with -O2.

Version 0.1.1 (2012-07-28)

Minor bugfix release.

Version 0.1 (2012-04-17)

Initial release.