There were too much changes between Freearc 0.36 and 0.40 releases - actually, half of the program was wriiten in this period! If you are interested to know them, read the http://freearc.sourceforge.net/Presenting%20FreeArc%200.40.htm or "Presenting FreeArc 0.40.htm" in this archive. The whole list of changes is in History.txt and includes 250 items! This file lists only changes made in FreeArc pre-release versions. First, I'm glad to inform you that FreeArc now occupies first 3 places in MFC efficiency test, i.e. it's ranked as the most efficient archiver at the wide range of compression levels - starting with zip-level compression in -m1 mode and ending with ccm-level compression in -mx mode: http://www.maximumcompression.com/data/summary_mf2.php =========================================================================================== === CHANGES in FreeArc 0.40 release, dated Jan 1 2008 ===================================== =========================================================================================== Fixed errors: In freearc.addon (settings for Total Commander plugin). You should reimport new settings It was impossible to extract archives created with external compression (in -m5p..-max modes) Improved compression in -m5p..-max modes by adding "exe" to $iso/$precomp methods in arc.ini =========================================================================================== === CHANGES in FreeArc 0.40 pre-release 4, dated Dec 16 2007 ============================== =========================================================================================== I still stuck with English docs, so it's one more prerelease version. Changes are: - Fixed problem with use of -dm9 option - "All OK" message printed only if --display option includes 'k' letter - Progress indicator now is much more accurate. It will never more freeze exactly at 99.9% :) - Listing/extracting archives directly from Internet (see below) - Archive recovery by redowloading broken parts from Internet (see below) - Improved recovery feature (see below) - Russian docs were updated with description of all the new features === EXTRACTING FROM INTERNET ================================================ Archives can be listed/extracted directly from Internet without downloading whole archive: arc l http://www.haskell.org/bz/arc.arc arc x http://www.haskell.org/bz/arc.arc *.h URL may be also used as name of filelist, comment file, original archive (see below) - anything that's open only for reading. Please note that compressing files directly from Internet is impossible. When we work with archive, only the data required for actual operation will be downloaded. This means that you may work quickly even with huge archives. Please note that servers without RESUME functionality are not supported at all In Windows, Internet Explorer proxy settings are used; you can override them with --proxy and --bypass options (read http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-US/library/aa383996.aspx for details, use "," instead of " ") In Linux, libcurl is used, so you can use http_proxy, ftp_proxy, all_proxy and no_proxy environment variables (man curl for details), --proxy option is also supported === RECOVERY USING INTERNET ================================================= If archive contains recovery record and there is reliable archive copy in Internet, you can restore archive by redownloading only broken parts of archive. To try this feature download http://www.haskell.org/bz/bad.arc . Run the command arc t bad Program says that archive is broken. Let's try to restore it: arc r bad Impossible. Now ask FreeArc to redownload broken parts from Internet: arc r bad --original=http://www.haskell.org/bz/good.arc And archive succesfuly restored! This required to download only 8kb - size of 2 archive sectors that was broken! You can further spoil archive with your favourite binary editor and see how it will survive despite any damages! There is also alternative way - you can save list of broken archive ranges to file and use any other utility (such as curl) to download these data that may be used to patch the archive: arc r bad --save-bad-ranges=bad.ranges --original option has two more forms: * you can use it without parameter, in this case FreeArc will try to extract URL from archive description in files.bbs/descript.ion * --original?get_url will run "get_url arcname" external command and use its output as URL/filename of original archive Both forms are great for using in arc.ini. Please note that FreeArc checks that size of archive being downloaded is the same as of archive being recovered and that CRCs of downloaded sectors are correct so there are strong guarantees that recovered data will be correct Filename specified in --original option don't need to be a URL - it may point to ordinary file === RECOVERY ================================================================ Now progress indicator is displayed when archive protection/scanning/recovery performed. That's especially important when you recover archive using Internet, since this operation may be rather slow Recovered archive (fixed.*) now includes original recovery record, which was stripped by previous versions of FreeArc Option -rr0% or -rr0 may be used to add to archive as small recovery info as possible. Now it's only 0.1% of archive size. This info contains only CRCs of archive sectors, so it's not enough to recover archive by itself, but it allows to recover archives over Internet. I recommend to use at least this amount of recovery info for every archive you share via Internet Amount of recovery info may be also specified explicitly: * -rr1%;4kb forces using of 4kb recovery sectors for 1% recovery record * -rr4*64kb forces using four 64kb recovery sectors So, -rr0% == -rr0%;4kb == -rr0*4kb which means that recovery record includes no recovery sectors and CRC-32 for each 4kb archive sector =========================================================================================== === CHANGES in FreeArc 0.40 pre-release 3, dated Nov 17 2007 ============================== =========================================================================================== This update fixes all known severe bugs, and should be last before the final release. The main task remained now is English version of docs. I've tested new Tornado algorithm on 1 TB of data and fixed several bugs, now it should be reliable enough for practical usage. FAR plugin was extended to support archives and files larger than 4 GB. Total Commander plugin was updated to open archives faster - you should reimport freearc.addon and copy unarc.exe into the PATH. Definition of external compressors having multiple versions was simplified, look for "ccm" in arc.ini for examples. If you will follow the new style, compressed data will be tagged with exact version of compressor used, which means less confusion when extracting data. At last, Unix version was added Ctrl-Break handling. =========================================================================================== === CHANGES in FreeArc 0.40 pre-release 2, dated Nov 1 2007 ============================== =========================================================================================== FreeArc 0.40 prerelease-2 version implements RAR-compatible -ep option and fixes several bugs with handling absolute pathnames =========================================================================================== === CHANGES in FreeArc 0.40 pre-release 1, dated Oct 24 2007 ============================== =========================================================================================== It's a public test version of FreeArc 0.40. Please use it only for tests