- WIMLIB
-
-This is wimlib version 1.2.6 (March 2013). wimlib can be used to read,
-write, and mount files in the Windows Imaging Format (WIM files). These files
-are normally created by using the `imagex.exe' utility on Windows, but this
-library provides a free implementation of imagex for UNIX-based systems.
-
- WIM FILES
-
-A Windows Imaging (WIM) file is an archive. Like some other archive formats
-such as ZIP, files in WIM archives may be compressed. WIM archives support two
-Microsoft-specific compression formats: LZX and XPRESS. Both are based on LZ77
-and Huffman encoding, and both are supported by wimlib.
-
-Unlike ZIP files, WIM files can contain multiple independent toplevel directory
-trees known as images. While each image has its own metadata describing a
-directory tree and file access modes, files are not duplicated for each image;
-instead, each file is included only once in the entire WIM. Microsoft did this
-so that in one WIM file, they could do things like have 5 different versions of
-Windows that are almost exactly the same.
-
-Microsoft provides documentation for the WIM file format, XPRESS compression
-format, and LZX compression format. The XPRESS documentation is acceptable, but
-the LZX documentation is not entirely correct, and the WIM documentation itself
-is incomplete.
-
-A WIM file may be either stand-alone or split into multiple parts.
-
- PROGRAMS
-
-wimlib provides a public API for other programs to use, but also comes with two
-programs: `imagex' and `mkwinpeimg'.
-
-`imagex' is intended to be like the imagex.exe program from Windows. `imagex'
-can be used to create, extract, and mount WIM files. Both read-only and
-read-write mounts are supported. See the man page `doc/imagex.1' for more
-details.
-
-`mkwinpeimg' is shell script that makes it easy to create a customized bootable
-image of Windows PE that can be put on a CD or USB drive, or published on a
-server for PXE booting. See the main page `doc/mkwinpeimg.1' for more details.
-
-There is an additional program, `wimapply', that is not installed by default.
-It can be used to build a small executable with the ability to apply a WIM image
-from a standalone WIM, without having to build the whole shared library. This
-could be useful on Linux boot clients that only need to be able to apply a WIM,
-not capture/split/join/append/export/mount a WIM. See `programs/wimapply.c'.
-
- COMPRESSION RATIO
-
-wimlib can create XPRESS or LZX compressed WIM archives. Currently, the XPRESS
-compression ratio is slightly better than that provided by Microsoft's software,
-while the LZX compression ratio is approaching that of Microsoft's software but
-is not quite there yet. Running time is as good as or better than Microsoft's
-software, especially with multithreaded compression, available in wimlib v1.1.0
-and later.
-
-The following tables compare the compression ratio and performance for creating
-a compressed Windows PE image (disk usage of about 524 MB, uncompressed WIM size
-361 MB):
-
- Table 1. WIM size
-
- XPRESS Compression LZX Compression
- wimlib imagex (v1.2.1): 138,971,353 bytes 131,379,943 bytes
- Microsoft imagex.exe: 140,406,981 bytes 127,249,176 bytes
-
- Table 2. Time to create WIM
-
- XPRESS Compression LZX Compression
- wimlib imagex (v1.2.1, 2 threads): 11 sec 17 sec
- Microsoft imagex.exe: 25 sec 89 sec
-
- NTFS SUPPORT
-
-As of version 1.0.0, wimlib supports capturing and applying images directly to
-NTFS volumes. This was made possible with the help of libntfs-3g from the
-NTFS-3g project. This feature supports capturing and restoring NTFS-specific
-data such as security descriptors, alternate data streams, and reparse point
-data.
-
-The code for NTFS image capture and image application is complete enough that it
-is possible to apply an image from the "install.wim" contained in recent Windows
-installation media (Vista, Windows 7, or Windows 8) directly to a NTFS volume,
-and then boot Windows from it after preparing the Boot Configuration Data. In
+ INTRODUCTION
+
+This is wimlib version 1.9.1 (March 2016). wimlib is a C library for
+creating, modifying, extracting, and mounting files in the Windows Imaging
+Format (WIM files). wimlib and its command-line frontend 'wimlib-imagex'
+provide a free and cross-platform alternative to Microsoft's WIMGAPI, ImageX,
+and DISM.
+
+ INSTALLATION
+
+To install wimlib and wimlib-imagex on UNIX-like systems, you can compile from
+source (e.g. './configure && make && sudo make install'). Alternatively, check
+if a package has already been prepared for your operating system. Example files
+for Debian and RPM packaging are in the debian/ and rpm/ directories.
+
+To install wimlib and wimlib-imagex on Windows, just download and extract the
+ZIP file containing the latest binaries. See README.WINDOWS for more details.
+
+All official wimlib releases are available from https://wimlib.net.
+
+ WIM FILES
+
+A Windows Imaging (WIM) file is an archive designed primarily for archiving
+Windows filesystems. However, it can be used on other platforms as well, with
+some limitations. Like some other archive formats such as ZIP, files in WIM
+archives may be compressed. WIM archives support multiple compression formats,
+including LZX, XPRESS, and LZMS. All these formats are supported by wimlib.
+
+A WIM archive contains one or more "images", each of which is a logically
+independent directory tree. Each image has a 1-based index and usually a name.
+
+WIM archives provide data deduplication at the level of full file contents. In
+other words, each unique "file contents" is only stored once in the archive,
+regardless of how many files have that contents across all images.
+
+A WIM archive may be either stand-alone or split into multiple parts.
+
+An update of the WIM format --- first added by Microsoft for Windows 8 ---
+supports solid-mode compression. This refers to files being compressed together
+(e.g. as in a .tar.xz or .7z archive) rather than separately (e.g. as in a .zip
+archive). This usually produces a much better compression ratio. Solid
+archives are sometimes called "ESD files" by Microsoft and may have the ".esd"
+file extension rather than ".wim". They are supported in wimlib since v1.6.0.
+
+ IMAGEX IMPLEMENTATION
+
+wimlib itself is a C library, and it provides a documented public API (See:
+https://wimlib.net/apidoc) for other programs to use. However, it is also
+distributed with a command-line program called "wimlib-imagex" that uses this
+library to implement an imaging tool similar to Microsoft's ImageX.
+wimlib-imagex supports almost all the capabilities of Microsoft's ImageX as well
+as additional capabilities. wimlib-imagex works on both UNIX-like systems and
+Windows, although some features differ between the platforms.
+
+Run `wimlib-imagex' with no arguments to see an overview of the available
+commands and their syntax. For additional documentation:
+
+ * If you have installed wimlib-imagex on a UNIX-like system, you will find
+ further documentation in the man pages; run `man wimlib-imagex' to get
+ started.
+
+ * If you have downloaded the Windows binary distribution, you will find the
+ documentation for wimlib-imagex in PDF format in the "doc" directory,
+ ready for viewing with any PDF viewer. Please note that although the PDF
+ files are converted from UNIX-style "man pages", they do document
+ Windows-specific behavior when appropriate.
+
+ COMPRESSION
+
+wimlib (and wimlib-imagex) can create XPRESS, LZX, and LZMS compressed WIM
+archives. wimlib's compression codecs usually outperform and outcompress their
+closed-source Microsoft equivalents. Multiple compression levels and chunk
+sizes as well as solid mode compression are supported. Compression is
+multithreaded by default. Detailed benchmark results and descriptions of the
+algorithms used can be found at https://wimlib.net/compression.html.
+
+ NTFS SUPPORT
+
+WIM images may contain data, such as alternate data streams and
+compression/encryption flags, that are best represented on the NTFS filesystem
+used on Windows. Also, WIM images may contain security descriptors which are
+specific to Windows and cannot be represented on other operating systems.
+wimlib handles this NTFS-specific or Windows-specific data in a
+platform-dependent way:
+
+ * In the Windows version of wimlib and wimlib-imagex, NTFS-specific and
+ Windows-specific data are supported natively.
+
+ * In the UNIX version of wimlib and wimlib-imagex, NTFS-specific and
+ Windows-specific data are ordinarily ignored; however, there is also special
+ support for capturing and extracting images directly to/from unmounted NTFS
+ volumes. This was made possible with the help of libntfs-3g from the
+ NTFS-3G project.
+
+For both platforms the code for NTFS capture and extraction is complete enough
+that it is possible to apply an image from the "install.wim" contained in recent
+Windows installation media (Vista or later) directly to an NTFS filesystem, and
+then boot Windows from it after preparing the Boot Configuration Data. In