NTFSSecurity/.memory-bank/progress.md

status	last-verified	owner	source
current	2026-10-08	active-agent	repository evidence

Progress

Current status

5.0.0-rc5 is on the PowerShell Gallery and in the GitHub releases, published by CI on 2026-10-08 from the tag 5.0.0-rc5 on master (fcb370e, the merge of #114; Decision 12). Phase 2 of the quality gate (Decision 21) is complete on the local branch ai/release-5.0.0-rc6: the candidate 5.0.0-rc6 (acfe3af) passed the suite in four configurations, one security-reviewer pass, and the lab acceptance. It waits for the maintainer to push, merge, and tag it; Phase 3 follows. The stable Gallery version is still 4.2.6. NTFSSecurity will be archived soon; its users move to WindowsAccessControl (Decision 18).

Recent milestones

• 2026-10-02 to 2026-10-04: #91 to #97 aligned the docs with the code, shipped the help file, kept the docs on GitHub, set version 5.0.0, moved CI and a wiki generated from Docs to GitHub Actions, and completed the version history (Decisions 6 to 11).
• 2026-10-04: #98 (e0f5366) added releases on a version tag through CI (Decision 12). The tag 5.0.0-rc1 published to the Gallery and created the GitHub prerelease; the installed module passed the full suite.
• 2026-10-05, overnight run: the 24 code defects of work package 5 and the issues #3, #4, #5, #17, #74, #82, #86, and #88 fixed with regression tests, plus what one security review per PR found; the 37 open issues triaged; Docs/FAQ.md, Dependabot for the actions, and the label rc2. #5 and #82 are breaking changes, like the change of Decision 13.
• 2026-10-05: the first CI runs of the eight PRs found a defect that the workstation had skipped, fixed in 629f4e7 (audit inheritance of an item without a SACL). The PRs #99 to #106 were merged in order with merge commits, CI on master passed, and the tag 5.0.0-rc2 published the prerelease; GitHub's Actions outage that day cancelled the first two attempts of the release run before they started. Repository hardening is optional (Decision 14); the merge rule and the maintainer's rule for fixes are Decisions 15 and 16.
• 2026-10-06: the issues got their labels (Decision 17). The maintainer decided to publish 5.0.0-rc3 before 5.0.0 and to archive the project in favor of WindowsAccessControl (Decision 18); the README, the docs home, and the changelog announce it.
• 2026-10-06: 5.0.0-rc3 (#112): the access and audit cmdlets write only the section that they change, which fixes #34 and the inherited entries that elevated sessions copied as explicit ones (Decision 19). #67 has its cause outside the module (a share root over UNC can't re-inherit), is explained in Docs/FAQ.md, and was closed as not planned. One security-reviewer pass approved the branch. The PR description said "fixes #34", so the merge closed #34; it was reopened for a tester.
• 2026-10-06: 5.0.0-rc4 (#113), test-first: drive and volume roots read and change their root folder, not the device (#41); the audit cmdlets reject a descriptor without the audit entries (#109); -WhatIf previews Copy-Item2 and Move-Item2 despite an existing destination (#108); small items (#111). One security-reviewer pass approved it; its Minor findings R1, R2, R6, and R8 were fixed before the merge. #41, #108, #109, and #111 closed as completed, #90 and #107 as not planned.
• 2026-10-07: live tests in the lab of WindowsAccessControl (Decision 20) against 5.0.0-rc2 and 5.0.0-rc4 in both editions: rc2 fails #34 over SMB with error 1307 for Add-NTFSAccess, Clear-NTFSAccess, and Set-NTFSSecurityDescriptor; rc4 passes the four cases, except Get-NTFSEffectiveAccess -ServerName with a computer that can't be reached, which returned no access since before rc1. The maintainer chose to fix it test-first in 5.0.0-rc5; the branch build passes all live tests and the suite. One security-reviewer pass approved it with minor findings (activeContext.md).
• 2026-10-08: #114 merged (fcb370e); the tag 5.0.0-rc5 published it to the Gallery and the GitHub releases, whose NTFSSecurity.zip holds the same 11 files. Phase 1 of the quality gate (Decision 21) measured rc5: the published package passes the live tests in both editions; the 11 tests that need a session without the Security privilege pass as a basic user, so every test runs in at least one configuration, but CI runs only elevated; the suite runs 55.9% of the C# lines and 37.4% of the branches. The maintainer approved Phase 2.
• 2026-10-08: Phase 2, step 1 on ai/release-5.0.0-rc6 (local): tests for Set-NTFSOwner, Test-Path2, Get-DiskSpace, and the link cmdlets (suite: 555 tests). Fixed test-first: the privileges stayed enabled after an early stop; Test-Path2 stopped for invalid characters in Windows PowerShell; and, from one security-reviewer pass, the privilege cleanup decided on stale states, a defect since 4.2.6. The page of New-NTFSSymbolicLink was corrected after a lab check of Developer Mode.
• 2026-10-08: Phase 2 finished on ai/release-5.0.0-rc6 (local). Tests for Get-NTFSOrphanedAudit, Get-NTFSSimpleAccess, the -SecurityDescriptor parameter sets, the error contracts of all path cmdlets, and #110. Fixed test-first: Get-NTFSSimpleAccess (ReadData, relative paths), Copy-Item2 and Move-Item2 (folder conflicts, the missing destination folder of #21), the hard-link cmdlets on shares, Set-NTFSSecurityDescriptor -PassThru (R5), and the error ID of Get-NTFSOrphanedAccess; from the coverage report, relative paths that start with a dot (every cmdlet acted on the item without the first two characters), comparing output objects (InvalidCastException), and InheritedFrom. CI runs the suite as a basic user too; the live tests cover all cmdlet groups and accounts of three more domains. Suite: 677 tests, none failed, none skipped in every configuration; C# coverage 68.1% of the lines and 44.3% of the branches (rc5: 58.1% and 38.0%, measured again; the first measurements counted one of four runs). Two security-reviewer passes; the lab acceptance of 7b0781f passed (Tests/Lab/Acceptance-2026-10-08-5.0.0-rc6.md).

Stable capabilities

• 36 cmdlets: access (7), audit (5), inheritance (6), owner and security descriptor (4), privileges (3), long-path items (6), links, hash, and disk space (5).
• Works in Windows PowerShell 5.1 and PowerShell 7. In PowerShell 7, Get-FileHash2 lacks RIPEMD160 and MACTripleDES, which .NET lacks.
• Pester tests in Tests\ run in $env:TEMP sandboxes through Tests\TestHelpers.psm1; tests that need privileges skip without them and run in CI, whose runners are elevated.

Open work

1. Quality gate before 5.0.0 (Decision 21): Phase 2 is done on the branch ai/release-5.0.0-rc6 (activeContext.md); the maintainer pushes it, merges the pull request, and tags 5.0.0-rc6, and the live tests run against the published package. Phase 3 runs the live tests on more operating systems. Then release 5.0.0 through CI (Decision 12): remove the label, date [Unreleased] as [5.0.0], add the last prerelease to $publishedVersions, and tag 5.0.0 (steps in Docs/Contributing/05-Releasing.md). #34 stays open with Bug and Help Wanted until a tester with a file server that refuses the owner confirms the fix, or until 5.0.0 ships.
2. Issues: the rc6 branch addresses the seven items of #110 (tests); the pull request names it without a closing keyword, so the maintainer closes it after the merge. #21 (a misleading error of Move-Item2) got a fix in rc6 that names the missing destination folder. #68 tracks -WhatIf and -Confirm for every cmdlet that changes security. The labels follow Decision 17; #16, #21, #45, and #89 wait for their reporters (Needs Info). Not planned for 5.0.0: the enhancements #22, #49, #68, #77, #87.
3. Review findings, not filed: of rc3, an extra DACL read and four SDDL snapshots on read paths, and a duplicate SACL check; of rc4, R3 to R5, R7, and five older defects, listed in the description of #113, among them the accounts filter that RemoveFileSystemAccessRuleAll and RemoveFileSystemAuditRuleAll ignore, which no cmdlet passes; of rc5, the bare catch in Win32.GetEffectiveAccess, the unchecked AUTHZ_ACCESS_REPLY.Error, a fallback warning without the server name, and hardening of the lab controller (guards in the setup blocks, interpolated -EncodedCommand paths, CredSSP by IP address, the password string in memory, disabling the role accounts after a run); of rc6, a privilege that fails to be disabled isn't tried again by Dispose (finding 2, not reproducible).
4. Behavior changes found in Phase 2, for the maintainer (Decision 16): Get-NTFSOrphanedAudit returns nothing without the Security privilege, while Get-NTFSAudit writes ReadSecurityError; Get-NTFSSimpleAccess skips a folder whose parent it didn't process; New-NTFSSymbolicLink could create links without the privilege in Developer Mode (flag SYMBOLIC_LINK_FLAG_ALLOW_UNPRIVILEGED_CREATE, with a fallback before Windows 10 1703); -WhatIf names a conflict in a verbose message instead of a warning (R7); the fallback warning of Get-NTFSEffectiveAccess doesn't name the server; Move-Item2 can't move a folder to another volume; New-NTFSHardLink stops with a terminating error for a folder, unlike Get-NTFSHardLink (rc6 review, finding 11). Taken as an assumption in rc6, for review: Copy-Item2 no longer creates the missing folders of a destination for a folder. Found by the coverage report of rc6: -Target of the link cmdlets is optional and means the current location when it's omitted; equality of entries and descriptors is the identity of the wrapped .NET object, so two reads of the same entry differ for Compare-Object and Select-Object -Unique (value equality would be a behavior change); 400 points of code that nothing calls besides the 244 lines of unused classes (Phase 3).
5. pwsh 7.6.1 crashed three times during test runs on the ARM64 workstation (x64 emulation), without module frames; none of the CI runs on native x64 on 2026-10-05 crashed.
6. Optional for the maintainer: delete the AppVeyor project and revoke its GitHub authorization, restrict wiki editing to collaborators, ask Sup3rlativ3 to delete the Read the Docs project, and delete the branch test/transfer. In the lab, delete the checkpoints ntfs-rc6-*-before-acceptance of the six machines when they are no longer needed.
7. Reachable code that no test runs (coverage report of rc6, ranked by impact; about 300 points): Remove-Item2 on folders (-Recurse, -Force, DeleteError); the owner restore after taking ownership (RestoreOwnerError); the inheritance cmdlets on folders and Set-NTFSInheritance -AccessInheritanceEnabled $true; the mapping of all 13 -AppliesTo values and the flag parameters of Remove-NTFSAccess, Add-NTFSAudit, and Remove-NTFSAudit; the switches and errors of Get-ChildItem2; the table views and InheritedFrom in them; Move-Item2 -Force; account input errors; -PassThru after success of the audit and inheritance cmdlets; Set-NTFSSecurityDescriptor failures; the audit cmdlets without the Security privilege on a local item; Get-NTFSEffectiveAccess for an unresolvable SID; failed ownership retries of Clear-NTFSAccess and Set-NTFSInheritance. A display limit, not a defect: a conditional ACE shows as an unconditional entry, because the .NET rules have no condition.