Latest Announcements

Version 4.4.0 Released: Non-Blocking GUI, Interactive Resize/Skip Warnings & Fractional MB Precision

Today we are pleased to announce **Burn to the Brim 4.4.0**, a performance and robustness release bringing non-blocking tree rendering for large datasets, interactive volume capacity resize/skip warning prompts, and precise, locale-independent formatting and parsing of small/fractional MB capacities.

Incremental, Non-Blocking Tree Rendering: When solving large filesets (e.g. 250+ files or directories), the results TreeView loading previously blocked GUI operations, causing windows to hang. BTTB v4.4.0 implements background-threaded batching of 100 insertions at a time using GTK idle loop callbacks and Win32 message queue triggers. The GUI remains fully interactive and responsive with active visual busy progress spinners throughout the process.

Interactive Warnings & Skipped Files Array: When abnormal directory scans discover files exceeding capacity bounds, the solver prompts the user (with custom buttons on Linux/Windows and clean text cues in terminal CLI) to either: (1) Resize the volume capacity, (2) Skip larger files and continue, or (3) Cancel. Skipped files are compiled and documented inside a root-level "Skipped" absolute paths array inside the output index.json.

Precise Fractional MB Capacity: To prevent data loss for small/fractional volume sizes (e.g. 180KB or 0.18MB), capacity parsing/formatting has been refactored to retain specific suffixes. Numeric locale variables (LC_NUMERIC) are forced to "C" to avoid decimal mark issues, and input parsing automatically interprets both comma and dot decimal separators natively.

Version 4.3.0 Released: Modular Localization, PO Translations & Dynamic GUI Languages

Today we are pleased to announce **Burn to the Brim 4.3.0**, a major usability release bringing modular localization support with separate, extensible Gettext .po files in German, Dutch, French, and Spanish, alongside dynamic language reloading and automatic default system locale detection.

Modular PO Translations: Localization is now completely modular and separated from the default English language of the application. If translation files are deleted or absent, the code compiles and falls back gracefully to English without warning messages or crashes. Standard PO format is used, conforming to GNU Gettext specifications.

System Default & Preferences Integration: On start, BTTB automatically detects and assumes the language of the system on which it is running (Linux or Windows). Users can configure and override their language choice dynamically via a dropdown combobox in Settings/Preferences. Dynamic changes reload translation dictionaries on-the-fly and prompt the user to restart the application to apply modifications.

Win32 Edit & Dialog Newline Adaptation: Added support for Windows-native message boxes and multi-line edit fields by converting line endings from standard unix \n to \r\n dynamically.

Version 4.2.0 Released: Offline JSON Index, PAR3 Parity Integrity & Safe Error Correction

Today we are pleased to announce **Burn to the Brim 4.2.0**, a massive data integrity and cataloging release bringing automatic offline multi-volume JSON index catalog generation, a high-performance offline JSON TreeView parser, and optional, robust Cauchy Reed-Solomon PAR3 parity verification and copy-based restoration.

Offline JSON Indexing & Parser: Solving multi-volume sets now automatically generates an index.json catalog in the destination folder, mapping files, exact bytes, and system timestamps. Click "Import JSON Index..." to load this catalog offline and browse your entire archive structure instantly.

Cauchy Reed-Solomon PAR3 Parity: Optional PAR3 protection uses the state-of-the-art libpar3 engine. Backtracking knapsack solving dynamically incorporates estimated PAR3 sector overhead. Natively verify volumes against bit rot and repair files inside a clean target directory, preserving original source files in an untouched state under all circumstances.

Version 4.1.1 Released: Theme Selection, Modern Dark Theme & Startup Estimate Improvements

Today we are pleased to announce **Burn to the Brim 4.1.1**, a feature and styling release bringing complete Theme Selection support, immersive Modern Dark Theme options on Windows & Linux, and high-accuracy startup Estimated Time Left calculations.

Modern Dark Theme Integration: Standard dark theme selectors are now wired natively across platforms. On Linux GTK4, BTTB leverages application preferences instantly. On Windows Win32, BTTB implements solid brushes hooks for dialogs, edit fields, checklists, and static text controls, rendering a premium, native Dark Mode experience.

Improved Startup Estimated Time Left: Directory scanning has been restructured to calculate and dispatch Estimated Time Left countdowns immediately upon starting. This provides immediate, realistic visual feedback to the user before time-consuming neural embeddings or backtracking solver recursions commence.

Version 4.1.0 Released: Settings Memory, Named Custom Volumes, Auto Sizing & Rules Overrides

Today we are pleased to announce **Burn to the Brim 4.1.0**, a refinement and feature release stabilizing structured settings memory, named custom volume capacity profiles, dynamic Auto Volume sizing, rules-based pattern precedence overrides, and Estimated Time Left feedback.

Structured Settings Memory & Named Custom Volumes: BTTB now cleanly persists all selected capacity profiles, cluster sizes, slack limits, and preferences into a structured, cross-platform config file (settings.txt) under standard OS directories. You can also name custom capacity profiles (e.g. "Backup Drive") and save them natively to populate in your combo selectors upon future launches.

Dynamic Auto Sizing & Rules Overrides: A brand new "Auto Size" media profile runs a two-pass scan on items to determine the exact sector-aligned capacity matching the largest indivisible file or consolidated rules group, automatically optimizing slack perfectly. In addition, users can now toggle a rule precedence switch in Preferences so wildcard-matching rules take priority over neural semantic clustering.

Time Left Countdown, Activity Spinners & Tooltips: Graphical user interfaces (Linux GTK4 and Windows Win32) now include standard active spinner visualizers and highly accurate Estimated Time Left countdowns during solver execution, tracking real file transfer write rates. Native tooltips are bound to all buttons for professional accessibility, and the native Win32 About modal dialog has been completely redesigned with high-resolution app icon visualizers.

Version 4.0.0 Major Release: Entropy-Aware Semantic Packing based on MiniLM & Interactive Test Simulation Mode

Today we are thrilled to announce **Burn to the Brim 4.0.0**, a monumental major release introducing cutting-edge semantic coherence intelligence to storage optimization! BTTB v4.0.0 marks a huge leap forward by using machine learning models to group files logically.

Entropy-Aware Semantic Packing: In addition to classical size-based knapsack optimization and standard wildcards, BTTB now supports semantic clustering using deep learning sentence embedding models (Hugging Face's all-MiniLM-L6-v2). By entering a prompt (such as "keep similar content together"), files are vectorized and grouped prior to solver backtracking, ensuring files with related context end up on the same storage medium.

Extensible and Safe Fallback: If PyTorch/sentence-transformers are missing or python is completely absent, BTTB gracefully falls back to a highly optimized char-level N-gram TF-IDF vectorizer and native C++ string clustering heuristics. High-dimensional vector calculations happen out of process via JSON-IPC piping.

Interactive Test Simulation Mode: A dedicated "Test" run mode is now accessible in both the graphical interfaces (Linux GTK4 / Windows Win32) and CLI console. In test mode, BTTB simulates solver passes, calculates volume slack and semantic coherence metrics (average cosine similarity inside packed volumes), and reports the exact simulated organization without performing any disk write operations.

Major CLI Upgrades: Run pure simulations or semantic organization from the shell using the new --semantic "" and --test flags.

Version 3.3.0 Released: Unicode Long Paths, Setup Installers, Explorer Context Menus & Hybrid GUI/CLI

Today we are excited to release **Burn to the Brim 3.3.0**, bringing extreme robust operating system and shell integration features to both Linux and Windows platforms!

Unicode & Long Path Support: Filenames and paths exceeding 256 characters (up to 32,767 on Windows using standard UNC \\?\ prefix extensions) are now fully supported. Additionally, the scanner gracefully handles unreadable system files, presenting clear options to skip or abort processing.

Windows Setup Installer: In addition to our standalone ZIP package, we now distribute a native Windows Setup Installer package compiled using Nullsoft Scriptable Install System (NSIS), offering desktop and Start Menu shortcuts and a clean uninstallation utility.

Explorer Context Menu & Single-Instance IPC: On Windows, you can optionally integrate BTTB in the file explorer's right-click context menu. Subsequent file additions are piped thread-safely via single-instance WM_COPYDATA IPC messaging directly into the running BTTB window class, appending new source directories.

Hybrid GUI/CLI Binary: BTTB is now a hybrid binary! If run from a terminal shell with arguments (e.g. -h, -v, -cli, or folders), BTTB runs in pure command-line console mode, attaching directly to the parent cmd/bash shell. If run without arguments, or forced with -gui, BTTB loads the GUI!

Smart Adaptive Capacity Warning: When a file size exceeds the target volume size during scanning, BTTB prompts the user (CLI console prompt or graphical message dialog) to automatically adapt the volume size based on the largest file and retries solving in a seamless, optimized loop.

Native Debian Package (.deb) for Ubuntu: For Linux desktop environments, we now distribute a native Debian package installer supporting all active Ubuntu distributions—Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy), 24.04 (Noble), 25.04 (Plucky), and 26.04 out of the box! System symbol conflicts are solved by statically linking compiler runtimes and crafting low-level dynamic wrapping for all modern glibc conversion functions (reducing the GLIBC version requirement from 2.38 down to 2.35).

Version 3.2.0 Released: Multiple Directories, Symbolic Links & Win32 TreeView Explorer

Today we are thrilled to announce the release of **Burn to the Brim 3.2.0**! This major minor upgrade introduces highly requested operational features: scanning multiple directories simultaneously, generating lightweight symbolic links, a native results TreeView on Windows, and real-time human size preset alignments!

Multiple Source Folders: BTTB is no longer limited to a single source directory! Click the new "+" button next to the source selection to open a dedicated listbox manager. You can add, edit, or remove multiple source base directories. BTTB aggregates files across all roots into a virtual folder layout, intelligently filtering and ignoring any nested subdirectory overlapping to prevent duplicates.

Lightweight Symbolic Link Outputs: Next to "Move fitted folders/files", a new "Create symbolic links" checkbox is checked by default. Instead of duplicating space-consuming files, BTTB creates instant symbolic links in the destination folder pointing back to original files. This supports Windows native `CreateSymbolicLinkA` API, falling back to `mklink` shell commands, and then to a safe copying operation if both fail.

Standard Win32 TreeView Results: The Windows Win32 native standalone GUI now has a hierarchical left-side results explorer, matching the Linux GTK 4 tree sidebar. Review solved volumes, categories, and unfitted remaining items in an elegant native control.

Dynamic Size Suffixed Capacities: You can now specify capacities in human-readable fractions (e.g. `2.5GB`, `512MB`, `1.5TB`) directly in the entry field. BTTB computes the exact size in MB in real-time in parentheses under the field as you type. Added `256 GB` and `512 GB` presets with `4096`-byte alignment, and updated default custom size to `64 GB`.

Built-in Help System: Click the new "Help" button to show a comprehensive guide detailing split depth, max search time limits, spanning slack, grouping rules, and symbolic links.

Version 3.1.2 Released: Slack Optimizations & Unified Windows GUI Features

Today we are pleased to release **Burn to the Brim 3.1.2**, a high-performance minor update that resolves combinatorial search issues, adds an early-slack pruning optimization, and unifies the settings dialogue across Linux and Windows!

High-Slack Solver Pruning: Solved the search explosion issue under large-slack datasets (such as a 650MB volume size with 650MB - 2048B slack). The backtracking solver now employs immediate early termination when a candidate subset is within the permitted slack limit, terminating complex searches in milliseconds instead of hanging.

Unified Preferences on Windows Win32 GUI: The Windows Win32 native GUI now features the complete Preferences dialog matching the Linux GTK 4 version! Configure Max Search Time limits and manage standard wildcard or regular expression file/folder grouping rules natively using an elegant standard ListView control.

Visual Thinking Progress: Added a dedicated "Trace" checkbox in both the Linux and Windows GUIs. When enabled, the real-time backtracking choice sequence is shown directly in the progress logging panel, so users can watch the solver's thinking and pruning in progress.

Version 3.1.1 Released: Advanced Solver Tracing & Performance Metrics

Today we are pleased to release **Burn to the Brim 3.1.1**, a minor feature update that adds robust analytical tools and tracing features to the modern C++20 backtracking engine on both Windows and Linux!

Advanced Solver Tracing: Power users can now enable detailed real-time tracing of the recursive backtracking branch-and-bound search. BTTB prints explored search state counts and branch-pruning milestones, helping you observe exactly how the knapsack solver mathematically decides the optimal packing selections.

Capacity & Volume Estimation: Prior to executing the backtracking loop, BTTB now estimates the theoretical minimum number of media volumes required based on your dataset size, sector counts, and cluster size alignments.

Search Efficiency Summaries: At the conclusion of each run, BTTB logs detailed performance metrics: total states explored, branches pruned, elapsed search time, and mathematical pruning efficiency percentages.

Spanning Automated Test Suite: The offline test suite has been fully upgraded to verify Multi-Volume Spanning recursively on custom dummy datasets using standard 60MB limits, copying and validating target directory results.

Version 3.1.0 Released: BD/USB Storage & Multi-Volume Spanning Engine

Today we are thrilled to announce the immediate availability of **Burn to the Brim 3.1.0** for both Windows and Linux! This major feature update brings the most requested enhancements to the modern C++20 port: high-capacity media presets and a powerful multi-disk organization loop.

Iterative Multi-Volume Spanning: You can now pack exceptionally large directory trees that exceed the capacity of a single disc or flash drive. When "Span across multiple volumes" is checked, the backtracking solver iteratively runs on the remaining unselected files, organizing them automatically into separate subfolders like Volume_1, Volume_2, and so on.

High-Capacity Media Presets: We have added native, built-in capacity presets for Blu-ray discs (BD 25 GB and BD DL 50 GB) as well as USB Flash Drives (8 GB, 16 GB, 32 GB, and 64 GB). Sector calculations have been carefully updated to 4096-byte clusters for USB filesystems and 2048-byte sectors for optical media.

GUI Upgrades on Both Platforms: On Linux, the GTK 4 interface has been updated with the Spanning check, expanded media combos, and a completely rewritten nested result tree that displays files grouped neatly under volume parent nodes. On Windows, the native Win32 SDK GUI has been updated to prevent control overlap by dynamically expanding the main window height, updating the combobox dropdown size, and incorporating the new options.

Version 3.0.0 Released: Complete C++20 Redesign

We are extremely proud to announce that **Burn to the Brim 3.0.0** is officially available! We have completely retired the ancient Delphi codebase and rebuilt the entire core bin-packing engine from scratch using **modern C++20**.

BTTB now includes two dedicated graphical interfaces. On Linux, a modern GNOME-styled GTK 4 interface offers scrolling file tree listings and rich colored logs. On Windows, an ultra-lightweight (~160KB) native Win32 SDK GUI compiles statically to link strictly against pre-installed Windows DLLs, making it 100% compliant with GPL/LGPL open-source licensing.

Key features in this release include recursive split-depth scanning parameters, modern glob and regex rule groupings, thread-safe asynchronous solver execution, and fully-integrated ISO 9660 image creation natively supported on both platforms.

Linux GTK 4 GNOME Adwaita Desktop Interface

Windows Native Win32 SDK GUI & Modal ISO Creator

Legacy version 2.6.1 is out

Version 2.6.1 of the original Delphi branch is available. It features the classic tabbed results grid and multi-disk selections.