CloneWiper v1.1 — Release notes

Release date: April 9, 2026

Highlights

Faster scans and comparisons in the core engine (partial hashing, similarity grouping, and parallel hash-pair processing).
Persistent thumbnail cache in SQLite for quicker UI scrolling on repeat runs.
Windows build fix for PyInstaller 6 on Python 3.12+ (distutils exclude removed).

Partial-hash phase uses concurrent.futures.wait(..., FIRST_COMPLETED) instead of a tight as_completed timeout loop, reducing wasted CPU while waiting for workers.
Multi-algorithm similarity: pre-parse perceptual hashes once per file hash string; reuse for LSH buckets, parallel comparisons, and the small-dataset path (fewer repeated hex_to_hash calls).
Candidate hash-pair comparison uses as_completed instead of executor.map, avoiding head-of-line blocking when pair cost varies (e.g. ORB).
Full-hash aggregation no longer takes a global lock on every file (single-threaded consumer from as_completed).
Background file prefetch for hashing is disabled by default (_file_prefetch_enabled = False) to avoid extra threads and redundant I/O; the prefetch pool shutdown behavior was corrected when prefetch is re-enabled in code.

New module core/thumbnail_cache.py: SQLite-backed storage for generated thumbnails (platform-appropriate path under %LOCALAPPDATA%\CloneWiper on Windows).
Optional script verify_thumbnail_cache.py to inspect or validate cache behavior.

build_windows.bat: removed --exclude-module=distutils, which triggered
ValueError: Target module "distutils" already imported as "ExcludedModule('distutils',)"
under PyInstaller 6 and Python 3.12+ during dependency analysis.

Area	Change
`core/engine.py`	Scan/compare performance, logging, prefetch default off
`qt_app.py`	Logging, `CLONEWIPER_DEBUG`, traceback via logger
`core/thumbnail_cache.py`	New persistent thumbnail cache
`verify_thumbnail_cache.py`	New optional utility
`build_windows.bat`	PyInstaller / `distutils` fix
`README.md`	v1.1, docs, structure

Thank you for using CloneWiper. Issues and PRs welcome on GitHub.