winpty/RELEASES.md

Next Version

The winpty library has a new API that should be easier for embedding.

User-visible changes:

• winpty now automatically puts the terminal into mouse mode when it detects that the console has left QuickEdit mode. The --mouse option still forces the terminal into mouse mode. In principle, an option could be added to suppress terminal mode, but hopefully it won't be necessary. There is a script in the misc subdirectory, misc/ConinMode.ps1, that can change the QuickEdit mode from the command-line.

Bug fixes:

• By default, winpty.dll avoids calling SetProcessWindowStation within the calling process. #58
• Fixed an uninitialized memory bug that could have crashed winpty. #80

Version 0.3.0 (2016-05-20)

User-visible changes:

• The UNIX adapter is renamed from console.exe to winpty.exe to be consistent with MSYS2. The name winpty.exe is less likely to conflict with another program and is easier to search for online (e.g. for someone unfamiliar with winpty).
• The UNIX adapter now clears the TERM variable. #43
• An escape character appearing in a console screen buffer cell is converted to a '?'. #47

Bug fixes:

• A major bug affecting XP users was fixed. #67
• Fixed an incompatibility with ConEmu where winpty hung if ConEmu's "Process 'start'" feature was enabled. #70
• Fixed a bug where cmd.exe sometimes printed the message, Not enough storage is available to process this command.. #74

Many changes internally:

• The codebase is switched from C++03 to C++11 and uses exceptions internally. No exceptions are thrown across the C APIs defined in winpty.h.
• This version drops support for the original MinGW compiler packaged with Cygwin (i686-pc-mingw32-g++). The MinGW-w64 compiler is still supported, as is the MinGW distributed at mingw.org. Compiling with MSVC now requires MSVC 2013 or newer. Windows XP is still supported. ec3eae8df5
• Pipe security is improved. winpty works harder to produce unique pipe names and includes a random component in the name. winpty secures pipes with a DACL that prevents arbitrary users from connecting to its pipes. winpty now passes PIPE_REJECT_REMOTE_CLIENTS on Vista and up, and it verifies that the pipe client PID is correct, again on Vista and up. When connecting to a named pipe, winpty uses the SECURITY_IDENTIFICATION flag to restrict impersonation. Previous versions should still be secure.
• winpty-debugserver.exe now has an --everyone flag that allows capturing debug output from other users.
• The code now compiles cleanly with MSVC's "Security Development Lifecycle" (/SDL) checks enabled.

Version 0.2.2 (2016-02-25)

Minor bug fixes and enhancements:

• Fix a bug that generated spurious mouse input records when an incomplete mouse escape sequence was seen.
• Fix a buffer overflow bug in winpty-debugserver.exe affecting messages of exactly 4096 bytes.
• For MSVC builds, add a src/configurations.gypi file that can be included on the gyp command-line to enable 32-bit and 64-bit builds.
• winpty-agent --show-input mode: Flush stdout after each line.
• Makefile builds: generate a build/winpty.lib import library to accompany build/winpty.dll.

Version 0.2.1 (2015-12-19)

• The main project source was moved into a src directory for better code organization and to fix #51.
• winpty recognizes many more escape sequences, including:
  • putty/rxvt's F1-F4 keys #40
  • the Linux virtual console's F1-F5 keys
  • the "application numpad" keys (e.g. enabled with DECPAM)
• Fixed handling of Shift-Alt-O and Alt-[.
• Added support for mouse input. The UNIX adapter has a --mouse argument that puts the terminal into mouse mode, but the agent recognizes mouse input even without the argument. The agent recognizes double-clicks using Windows' double-click interval setting (i.e. GetDoubleClickTime). #57

Changes to debugging interfaces:

• The WINPTY_DEBUG variable is now a comma-separated list. The old behavior (i.e. tracing) is enabled with WINPTY_DEBUG=trace.
• The UNIX adapter program now has a --showkey argument that dumps input bytes.
• The winpty-agent.exe program has a --show-input argument that dumps INPUT_RECORD records. (It omits mouse events unless --with-mouse is also specified.) The agent also responds to WINPTY_DEBUG=trace,input, which logs input bytes and synthesized console events, and it responds to WINPTY_DEBUG=trace,dump_input_map, which dumps the internal table of escape sequences.

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.