INTRODUCTION
-This is wimlib version 1.4.2 (June 2013). wimlib is a C library for creating,
-modifying, extracting, and mounting files in the Windows Imaging Format (WIM
-files). These files are normally created by using the `imagex.exe' utility on
-Windows, but wimlib is distributed with a free implementation of ImageX called
-"wimlib-imagex" for both UNIX and Windows.
+This is wimlib version 1.5.3 (December 2013). wimlib is a C library for
+creating, modifying, extracting, and mounting files in the Windows Imaging
+Format (WIM files). These files are normally created using the ImageX
+(imagex.exe) or Dism (Dism.exe) utilities on Windows, but wimlib is distributed
+with a free implementation of ImageX called "wimlib-imagex" for both UNIX-like
+systems and Windows.
INSTALLATION
extract the ZIP file containing the latest binaries from the SourceForge page
(http://sourceforge.net/projects/wimlib/), which you may have already done.
-To install wimlib and wimlib-imagex on UNIX (with Linux being the primary
-supported and tested platform), you must compile it from the source code. At
-some point I might start posting RPMs and Debian packages for convenience.
+To install wimlib and wimlib-imagex on UNIX-like systems (with Linux being the
+primary supported and tested platform), you must compile the source code, which
+is also available at http://sourceforge.net/projects/wimlib/. Alternatively,
+check if a package has been prepared for your Linux distribution. Example files
+for Debian and RPM packaging are in the debian/ and rpm/ directories.
WIM FILES
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 files support two compression formats: LZX and
-XPRESS. Both are supported by wimlib.
+XPRESS *. Both are supported by wimlib.
A WIM file consists of one or more "images". Each image is an independent
top-level directory structure and is logically separate from all other images in
A WIM file may be either stand-alone or split into multiple parts. Split WIMs
are read-only and cannot be modified.
+* Note: The Windows 8 WIMGAPI apparently adds a third format, LZMS, but it is
+ not documented and is incompatible with ImageX and Dism. It is unclear if
+ this new format is actually being used for anything.
+
IMAGEX IMPLEMENTATION
wimlib itself is a C library, and it provides a documented public API (See:
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 and Windows,
-although some features differ between the platforms.
+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 UNIX, you will find further
- documentation in the man pages; run `man wimlib-imagex' to get started.
+ * 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,
COMPRESSION RATIO
wimlib (and wimlib-imagex) 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 x86_64 Windows PE image. Note: these timings were done on Windows
-7 so that the times would be fully comparable; however, wimlib-imagex may have
-even better performance on Linux.
+so that the times would be fully comparable; however, wimlib may have even
+better performance on other operating systems such as Linux. Timings were done
+with 2 CPUs available, both of which automatically are used by wimlib for both
+XPRESS and LZX, and also by imagex.exe but apparently only for LZX.
Table 1. WIM size
XPRESS Compression LZX Compression
- wimlib-imagex (v1.4.0): 165,301,379 bytes 155,254,385 bytes
- Microsoft imagex.exe: 167,212,939 bytes 149,973,212 bytes
+ wimlib-imagex (v1.5.3): 207,444,390 bytes 188,106,091 bytes
+ Microsoft imagex.exe (Windows 7): 209,960,209 bytes 188,224,481 bytes
Table 2. Time to create WIM
XPRESS Compression LZX Compression
- wimlib-imagex (v1.4.0, 2 threads): 18 sec 51 sec
- Microsoft imagex.exe: 25 sec 93 sec
+ wimlib-imagex (v1.5.3): 73 sec 202 sec
+ Microsoft imagex.exe (Windows 7): 90 sec 149 sec
+
+The above LZX data are using explicitly specified maximum compression
+('--compress=maximum') as of wimlib v1.5.3. If `wimlib-imagex capture' or
+`wimlib-imagex capture' is instead run with no '--compress' argument, then a
+faster LZX compressor is used; it will produce results in between those given
+for XPRESS and LZX above.
+
+Note: if the absolute maximum (but still compatible) compression ratio is
+desired, `wimlib-imagex optimize WIMFILE --recompress --compress-slow' on one of
+the above LZX-compressed WIMs produces a WIM of 187,089,943 bytes in about 400
+seconds.
NTFS SUPPORT
WINDOWS PE
A major use for wimlib and wimlib-imagex is to create customized images of
-Windows PE, the Windows Preinstallation Environment, on either UNIX or Windows
-without having to rely on Microsoft's software and its restrictions and
-limitations.
+Windows PE, the Windows Preinstallation Environment, on either UNIX-like systems
+or Windows without having to rely on Microsoft's software and its restrictions
+and limitations.
Windows PE is a lightweight version of Windows that can run entirely from memory
and can be used to install Windows from local media or a network drive 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 if you install either the `cabextract' or `p7zip' programs.
+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
Windows PE.
-A shell script `mkwinpeimg' is distributed with wimlib on UNIX to ease the
-process of creating and customizing a bootable Windows PE image.
+A shell script `mkwinpeimg' is distributed with wimlib on UNIX-like systems to
+ease the process of creating and customizing a bootable Windows PE image.
DEPENDENCIES
This section documents the dependencies of wimlib and the programs distributed
-with it, when building for UNIX from source. If you have downloaded the Windows
-binary distribution of wimlib and wimlib-imagex then all dependencies were
-already included and this section is irrelevant.
+with it, when building for a UNIX-like system from source. If you have
+downloaded the Windows binary distribution of wimlib and wimlib-imagex then all
+dependencies were already included and this section is irrelevant.
* libxml2 (required)
This is a commonly used free library to read and write XML files. You
CONFIGURATION
This section documents the most important options that may be passed to the
-"configure" script when building the UNIX version from source:
+"configure" script when building from source:
--without-ntfs-3g
If libntfs-3g is not available or is not version 2011-4-12 or later,
wimlib is independently developed and does not contain any code, data, or files
copyrighted by Microsoft. It is not known to be affected by any patents.
-On UNIX, if you do not want wimlib to be dynamically linked with libcrypto
-(OpenSSL), configure with --without-libcrypto. This replaces the SHA1
+On UNIX-like systems, if you do not want wimlib to be dynamically linked with
+libcrypto (OpenSSL), configure with --without-libcrypto. This replaces the SHA1
implementation with built-in code and there will be no difference in
functionality.
git://wimlib.net / wimlib / blobdiff