CFS 0.5.0 Stable

CFS 0.5.0 Stable release notes

CFS 0.5.0 Stable replaces the legacy application-first workflow with
Explorer-first archive creation, browsing, editing, extraction, and recovery.

Explorer-first archive creation

• Create a .cfs archive from one folder or regular files selected from one
  directory through Compress to CFS. Mixed selections and special file
  system objects are rejected with an explanation.
• The command client owns the Save dialog, naming, compression preference,
  progress, cancellation, destination confirmation, and reveal-after-success
  workflow. Create or open archives without opening or depending on Cfs.App;
  Explorer does not load archive code. Create empty CFS archive here uses
  the production create-empty path.
• Double-clicking an archive opens its ProjFS workspace. Repeated opens reuse
  its writable session instead of creating competing writers.
• Windows 11 receives a primary compression action, a compact CFS archive
  submenu, and classic Show more options fallbacks.
• The in-process extension is limited to receiving selections, starting the
  command client, and reading the bounded broker status snapshot. Dirty and
  recovery-required archive or mount roots can receive a nonblocking status
  overlay; Explorer never waits on broker IPC for that status.

Safer persistence and recovery

• Ordinary mounted edits are automatically saved after a quiet period, while
  explicit commit, discard, close, and recovery actions retain distinct
  behavior.
• CFS preserves unchanged compressed blocks during projected saves. Clean
  ProjFS entries reuse their committed blocks; changed entries are read through
  the provider with sharing checks so partially written files are not committed.
• CFS keeps a validated same-volume predecessor until a candidate has been
  validated, atomically promoted, reopened, and validated again.
• External archive identity changes, write conflicts, disk-space failures, and
  interrupted commits preserve pending state rather than silently overwriting
  data. Recovery remains explicit: recover, discard, inspect the location, or
  cancel.
• CFS1 remains supported. CFS2 provides independently checksummed 64 MiB LZMA2
  chunks when a streamed large entry requires it.

Safety and compatibility

• Writable sessions are limited to local NTFS. Mark-of-the-Web archives and
  corrupted archives do not mount writable; read-only extraction remains an
  explicit fallback.
• The Stable package is designed to use the exact CFS RSA-3072 self-signed
  leaf certificate, RFC 3161 timestamping, signer/hash inventory, a public
  certificate, update manifest, SBOM, and checksums.
• Windows can still display Unknown Publisher or SmartScreen before a user
  explicitly trusts the exact CFS publisher certificate. CFS never installs a
  general root certificate authority.
• Optional failure reporting sends only sanitized structured diagnostic data
  when a configured reporting endpoint is available. It can be disabled or its
  installation identifier reset from Settings.

Requirements and known boundaries

• Target: Windows 11 x64, local NTFS, with Projected File System enabled.
• CFS archives are not encrypted. Use Windows access controls and independent
  backups where confidentiality or disaster recovery matters.
• Keep an independent backup of important files. CFS's retained previous
  version protects the most recent transaction boundary but is not a substitute
  for a separate backup.

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