INTRODUCTION
-This is wimlib version 1.8.1 (May 2015). wimlib is a C library for
+This is wimlib version 1.9.0-BETA (December 2015). 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,
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 http://wimlib.net.
+All official wimlib releases are available from https://wimlib.net.
WIM FILES
IMAGEX IMPLEMENTATION
wimlib itself is a C library, and it provides a documented public API (See:
-http://wimlib.net/apidoc) for other programs to use. However, it is also
+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
possible, the results with the Microsoft equivalent are included.
=============================================================================
- | Compression || wimlib (v1.8.0) | WIMGAPI (Windows 8.1) |
+ | Compression || wimlib (v1.8.3) | WIMGAPI (Windows 10) |
=============================================================================
- | None [1] || 361,314,224 in 2.4s | 361,315,338 in 4.5s |
- | XPRESS [2] || 138,218,750 in 3.0s | 140,457,436 in 6.0s |
- | XPRESS (slow) [3] || 135,173,511 in 8.9s | N/A |
- | LZX (quick) [4] || 130,207,195 in 3.8s | N/A |
- | LZX (normal) [5] || 126,522,539 in 10.4s | 127,293,240 in 19.2s |
- | LZX (slow) [6] || 126,042,313 in 17.3s | N/A |
- | LZMS (non-solid) [7] || 116,150,682 in 25.3s | N/A |
- | LZMS (solid) [8] || 88,107,484 in 61.7s | 88,769,830 in 102.3s |
- | "WIMBoot" [9] || 167,023,719 in 3.5s | 169,109,211 in 10.4s |
- | "WIMBoot" (slow) [10] || 165,027,583 in 7.9s | N/A |
+ | None [1] || 361,314,224 in 2.7s | 361,315,338 in 3.0s |
+ | XPRESS [2] || 137,954,729 in 3.0s | 140,457,081 in 6.4s |
+ | XPRESS (slow) [3] || 135,147,054 in 8.0s | N/A |
+ | LZX (quick) [4] || 130,098,933 in 3.3s | N/A |
+ | LZX (normal) [5] || 126,310,241 in 9.9s | 127,293,110 in 18.5s |
+ | LZX (slow) [6] || 125,884,919 in 17.4s | N/A |
+ | LZMS (non-solid) [7] || 116,150,698 in 23.4s | N/A |
+ | LZMS (solid) [8] || 88,108,326 in 55.6s | 88,771,800 in 90.9s |
+ | "WIMBoot" [9] || 166,892,801 in 3.0s | 169,108,689 in 8.9s |
+ | "WIMBoot" (slow) [10] || 165,004,333 in 7.8s | N/A |
=============================================================================
Notes:
Testing environment:
- 64 bit binaries
- - Windows 8.1 virtual machine running on Linux with VT-x
+ - Windows 10 virtual machine running on Linux with VT-x
- 4 CPUs and 4 GiB memory given to virtual machine
- SSD-backed virtual disk
- All tests done with page cache warmed
The compression ratio provided by wimlib is also competitive with commonly used
archive formats. Below are file sizes that result when the Canterbury corpus is
-compressed with wimlib (v1.8.0), WIMGAPI (Windows 8.1), and some other
+compressed with wimlib (v1.8.3), WIMGAPI (Windows 8.1), and some other
formats/programs:
=====================================================
| WIM (WIMGAPI, None) | 2,814,254 |
| WIM (wimlib, None) | 2,814,216 |
| WIM (WIMGAPI, XPRESS) | 825,536 |
- | WIM (wimlib, XPRESS) | 789,296 |
+ | WIM (wimlib, XPRESS) | 787,356 |
| tar.gz (gzip, default) | 738,796 |
| ZIP (Info-ZIP, default) | 735,334 |
| tar.gz (gzip, -9) | 733,971 |
| ZIP (Info-ZIP, -9) | 732,297 |
- | WIM (wimlib, LZX quick) | 690,110 |
+ | WIM (wimlib, LZX quick) | 686,420 |
| WIM (WIMGAPI, LZX) | 651,866 |
- | WIM (wimlib, LZX normal) | 624,634 |
- | WIM (wimlib, LZX slow) | 620,728 |
+ | WIM (wimlib, LZX normal) | 623,718 |
+ | WIM (wimlib, LZX slow) | 619,382 |
| WIM (wimlib, LZMS non-solid) | 581,046 |
| tar.bz2 (bzip, default) | 565,008 |
| tar.bz2 (bzip, -9) | 565,008 |
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, Windows 7, or Windows 8) directly to an NTFS
-filesystem, and then boot Windows from it after preparing the Boot Configuration
-Data. In addition, a Windows installation can be captured (or backed up) into a
-WIM file, and then re-applied later.
+Windows installation media (Vista or later) directly to an NTFS filesystem, and
+then boot Windows from it after preparing the Boot Configuration Data. In
+addition, a Windows installation can be captured (or backed up) into a WIM file,
+and then re-applied later.
WINDOWS PE
perform maintenance. It is the operating system that runs when you boot from
the Windows installation media.
-You can find Windows PE on the installation DVD for Windows Vista, Windows 7, or
-Windows 8, in the file `sources/boot.wim'. Windows PE can also be found in the
-Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK), which is free to download from
-Microsoft, inside the `WinPE.cab' file, which you can extract natively on
-Windows, or on UNIX-like systems if you install either the `cabextract' or
-`p7zip' programs.
+You can find Windows PE on the installation media for Windows (Vista or later)
+as the file `sources/boot.wim'. Windows PE can also be found in the Windows
+Automated Installation Kit (WAIK), which is free to download from Microsoft,
+inside the `WinPE.cab' file, which you can extract natively on Windows, or on
+UNIX-like systems if you install either the `cabextract' or `p7zip' programs.
In addition, Windows installations and recovery partitions frequently contain a
WIM containing an image of the Windows Recovery Environment, which is similar to
wimlib is mainly used on x86 and x86_64 CPUs, but it should also work on a
number of other GCC-supported 32-bit or 64-bit architectures. It has been
-tested on the ARM architecture.
+tested on the ARM and MIPS architectures.
Currently, gcc and clang are the only supported compilers. A few nonstandard
extensions are used in the code.
git://wimlib.net / wimlib / blobdiff