Only the most important changes more recent than version 0.6 are noted here.
+Version 1.2.1:
+ By default, unmounting a read-write mounted WIM with 'imagex unmount
+ --commit' will now change the WIM in-place without needing to write the
+ entire WIM again. Use 'imagex unmount --commit --rebuild' to get the
+ old behavior.
+
+ 'imagex unmount' no longer has a hard-coded limit of 10 minutes to wait
+ for a response from the daemon servicing the mounted WIM. Instead,
+ every second 'imagex unmount' will check if the daemon is still alive,
+ and keep waiting if so, otherwise terminate with an error.
+
+ 'imagex unmount --commit' on a read-write mounted WIM will now print
+ progress information regarding the writing of new or modified streams
+ the WIM, just like when capturing or appending a WIM.
+
+ A small change has been made to XPRESS compression and it should improve
+ the compression ratio slightly.
+
+ Microsoft has managed to introduce even more bugs into their software,
+ and now the WIMs for Windows 8 have incorrect (too low) reference counts
+ for some streams. This is unsafe because such streams can be removed
+ when they are in actuality still referenced in the WIM (perhaps by a
+ different image). wimlib will now work around this problem by fixing
+ the stream reference counts. This is only done when wimlib_delete_image() is
+ called ('imagex delete') or when wimlib_mount_image() is called with
+ WIMLIB_MOUNT_FLAG_READWRITE ('imagex mountrw'). Please note that this
+ requires reading the metadata for all images in the WIM, so this will
+ make these operations noticably slower on WIMs with multiple images.
+
Version 1.2.0:
Appending images to a WIM is now be done by default without re-building
the whole WIM. Use the --rebuild flag to get the old behavior (which
COMPRESSION RATIO
-wimlib can create XPRESS or LZX compressed WIM archives. As of wimlib v1.0.3,
-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 v1.1.0 and later.
+wimlib can create XPRESS or LZX compressed WIM archives. Currently, the 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
Table 1. WIM size
XPRESS Compression LZX Compression
- wimlib imagex (v1.0.2): 145,283,871 bytes 139,288,293 bytes
- wimlib imagex (v1.0.3): 139,288,293 bytes 131,379,869 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 (v1.0.2): 18 sec 49 sec
- wimlib imagex (v1.0.3): 19 sec 30 sec
- wimlib imagex (v1.1.0, 2 threads): 11 sec 17 sec
+ wimlib imagex (v1.2.1, 2 threads): 11 sec 17 sec
Microsoft imagex.exe: 25 sec 89 sec
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