WIMLIB
-This is wimlib version 1.2.7 (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.
+This is wimlib version 1.3.3 (April 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.
+
+wimlib 1.3.0 has added experimental support for Windows. See the file
+"README.WINDOWS" for more details.
WIM FILES
PROGRAMS
wimlib provides a public API for other programs to use, but also comes with two
-programs: `imagex' and `mkwinpeimg'.
+programs: `wimlib-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.
+`wimlib-imagex' is intended to be like the imagex.exe program from Windows.
+`wimlib-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/wimlib-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
Table 1. WIM size
XPRESS Compression LZX Compression
- wimlib imagex (v1.2.1): 138,971,353 bytes 131,379,943 bytes
+ 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
+ wimlib-imagex (v1.2.1, 2 threads): 11 sec 17 sec
Microsoft imagex.exe: 25 sec 89 sec
NTFS SUPPORT
--disable-custom-memory-allocator
If this option is given, a very small amount of space will be saved by
- removing support for the wimlib_set_memory_allocator() function. imagex
- will be unaffected.
-
---disable-verify-compression
- Unless this option is given, every time wimlib compresses a data block,
- it will decompress it into a temporary buffer and abort the program with
- an error message if the decompressed data does not exactly match the
- original data. This only makes compression about 10% slower. However,
- this checking can probably be safely disabled because there are no known
- bugs in the compression code, and the SHA1 message digest of every
- extracted file is checked anyway.
+ removing support for the wimlib_set_memory_allocator() function.
+ wimlib-imagex will be unaffected.
+
+--enable-verify-compression
+ If this option is given, every time wimlib compresses a data block, it
+ will decompress it into a temporary buffer and abort the program with an
+ error message if the decompressed data does not exactly match the
+ original data. This only makes compression about 10% slower. This
+ checking is disabled by default because there are no known bugs in the
+ compression code, and the SHA1 message digest of every extracted file is
+ checked anyway.
--disable-error-messages
Save some space by removing all error messages from the library.
The code pays attention to endianness, so it should work on big-endian
architectures, but I've never tested this so do not expect it to work.
-There are no plans to port wimlib to Windows since the programming interface on
-Windows is very different and Microsoft's imagex.exe is already available.
+As of wimlib 1.3.0, there is experimental support for Microsoft Windows. I
+expect it to work on Windows Vista and later, although I have only tested it on
+Windows 7. See README.WINDOWS for more information.
REFERENCES
MORE INFORMATION
-See the manual pages for `imagex', the manual pages for the subcommands of
-`imagex', and the manual page for `mkwinpeimg'.
+See the manual pages for `wimlib-imagex', the manual pages for the subcommands
+of `wimlib-imagex', and the manual page for `mkwinpeimg'.
As of version 0.5.0, wimlib's public API is documented. Doxygen is required to
build the documentation. To build the documentation, run `configure', then