WIM is written to a temporary file, and it is renamed to the original file when
it's ready. This action will remove any holes that have been left as a result
of appending images, so the new WIM may be slightly smaller than the old WIM.
-In addition, some errors in the original WIM may be fixed by re-writing it
-(although most cannot).
+.PP
+By default, compressed data will be re-used, and not recompressed. Use the
+\fB--recompress\fR or \fB--compress\fR=\fITYPE\fR[:\fILEVEL\fR] option to
+request recompression.
+.PP
This command is also available as simply \fBwimoptimize\fR if the appropriate
hard link or batch file has been installed.
.SH OPTIONS
.TP
\fB--recompress\fR
Recompress all compressed streams in \fIWIMFILE\fR when rebuilding it. This
-will increase the time needed to rebuild the WIM, unless the WIM is
-uncompressed, but it may result in a better compression ratio if wimlib can do a
-better job than the program that wrote the original file. A side effect of this
-is that every stream in the original WIM will be checksummed, so this can help
-verify that the WIM is intact (equivalent to applying all the images from it).
+will greatly increase the time needed to rebuild the WIM file, but it may result
+in a better compression ratio if wimlib can do a better job than the program
+that wrote the original file.
.TP
\fB--compress\fR=\fITYPE\fR[:\fILEVEL\fR]
Recompress the WIM file using the specified compression type, and optionally the
.TP
\fB--threads\fR=\fINUM_THREADS\fR
Number of threads to use for compressing data. Default: autodetect (number of
-processors). This parameter is only meaningful when \fB--recompress\fR is also
-specified.
+processors). This parameter only has an effect when data recompression is
+requested.
.TP
\fB--pipable\fR
Rebuild the WIM so that it can be applied fully sequentially, including from a
\fB@IMAGEX_PROGNAME@ export\fR \fIWIMFILE\fR all tmp.wim && mv tmp.wim \fIWIMFILE\fR
.RE
.PP
+.SH EXAMPLES
+Rebuild the WIM file 'install.wim':
+.RS
+.PP
+wimoptimize install.wim
+.RE
+.PP
+Rebuild and recompress the WIM file 'install.wim':
+.RS
+.PP
+wimoptimize install.wim --recompress
+.RE
+.PP
+Rebuild and recompress the WIM file 'install.wim', using "maximum" (LZX)
+compression at a higher-than-default compression level. The compression chunk
+size remains unchanged. This command will be slow, but it might be useful for
+optimizing files for distribution. See the COMPRESSION RATIO section of the
+README file for some benchmark results.
+.RS
+.PP
+wimoptimize install.wim --compress=maximum:100
+.RE
+.PP
.SH SEE ALSO
.BR @IMAGEX_PROGNAME@ (1)
.BR @IMAGEX_PROGNAME@-export (1)