Merry Christmas - and a quick update on MacPacker v0.13

[sarensw]

Merry Christmas to all of you 🎄

I’ve been working hard to get v0.13 out before Christmas, but I didn’t quite make it. This release is a big step forward: it introduces 7-Zip CLI support and, instead of relying on a single backend, now uses three different engines to cover a much wider range of archive formats. If one engine can’t open an archive, you can simply try another.

So why the delay? Performance.

Most of last week went into optimizing this part. The results are worth it: a 70 GB NTFS disk image now opens in about 20 seconds, down from nearly 5 minutes just a week ago.

v0.13 is essentially ready, but I don’t want to rush the release. Pushing a major update right before the holidays is like shipping on a Friday afternoon: it tends to come back and bite you.

I’ll release v0.13 as soon as possible after the holidays.

Until then, I wish you all a peaceful and joyful Christmas. See you in 2026.

-- Stephan