The libvips 8.18 release notes are here:
https://www.libvips.org/2025/12/04/What's-new-in-8.18.html
Notable changes since 8.17:
- add dcrawload, dcrawload_source, dcrawload_buffer: load raw camera files using libraw [lxsameer]
- add magickload_source: load from a source with imagemagick
- add vips__worker_exit(): enables fast threadpool shutdown
- larger mmap windows on 64-bit machines...