INTRODUCTION
-This is wimlib version 1.6.0 (January 2014). wimlib is a C library for
+This is wimlib version 1.7.0-BETA (May 2014). 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
A WIM file may be either stand-alone or split into multiple parts. Split WIMs
are read-only and cannot be modified.
+Since version 1.6.0, wimlib also supports ESD (.esd) files, except when
+encrypted. These are still WIM files but they use a newer version of the file
+format.
+
IMAGEX IMPLEMENTATION
wimlib itself is a C library, and it provides a documented public API (See:
archives. wimlib includes its own compression codecs and does not use the
compression API available on some versions of Windows. The below table provides
the results (file size, in bytes, and time to create, in seconds) of capturing a
-WIM containing a x86 Windows PE image, using various compression types and
+WIM containing an x86 Windows PE image, using various compression types and
options. When applicable, the results with the equivalent Microsoft
implementation in WIMGAPI, which is the library used by ImageX and Dism, are
included.
no known equivalent for WIMGAPI.
Compression chunk size is 32768 (the default for LZX).
- [6] '--compress=recovery' or '--compress=lzms' for wimlib-imagex;
+ [6] '--compress=recovery' or '--compress=LZMS' for wimlib-imagex;
no known way to create the equivalent with WIMGAPI.
Compression chunk size is 131072 (the default for LZMS). Note: this
compression type is not generally recommended due to its limited
compatibility with the MS implementations.
- [7] '--compress=recovery --packed-streams' or
- '--compress=lzms --packed-streams' for wimlib-imagex;
- WIMCreateFile with WIM_COMPRESSION_LZMS and flag 0x20000000 for WIMGAPI.
- Compression chunk size in packed resources is 33554432 for wimlib,
- 67108864 for WIMGAPI. Note: this compression type is not generally
- recommended due to its limited compatibility with the MS implementations.
- Also, due to the large chunk size, wimlib uses about 500MB of memory per
- thread when compressing in this format.
+ [7] '--compress=recovery --solid' or '--compress=LZMS --solid' for
+ wimlib-imagex; WIMCreateFile with WIM_COMPRESSION_LZMS and flag
+ 0x20000000 for WIMGAPI. Compression chunk size in packed resources is
+ 33554432 for wimlib, 67108864 for WIMGAPI. Note: this compression type
+ is not generally recommended due to its limited compatibility with the MS
+ implementations. Also, due to the large chunk size, wimlib uses about
+ 500MB of memory per thread when compressing in this format.
The above timings were done on Windows 8 (x86) so that side-by-side comparisons
with the Microsoft implementation would be possible; however, wimlib may have
| WIM (WIMGAPI, XPRESS) | 825,410 |
| WIM (wimlib, XPRESS) | 792,024 |
| tar.gz (gzip, default) | 738,796 |
- | ZIP (Info-Zip, default) | 735,334 |
+ | ZIP (Info-ZIP, default) | 735,334 |
| tar.gz (gzip, -9) | 733,971 |
- | ZIP (Info-Zip, -9) | 732,297 |
+ | ZIP (Info-ZIP, -9) | 732,297 |
| WIM (wimlib, LZX quick) | 722,196 |
| WIM (WIMGAPI, LZX) | 651,766 |
| WIM (wimlib, LZX normal) | 639,464 |
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 a NTFS
+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.
from libcrypto (part of OpenSSL). The default is to use libcrypto if it
is found on the system.
---enable-xattr, --disable-xattr
- Enable or disable support for the extended-attributes interface to NTFS
- alternate data streams in mounted WIMs. To support these, wimlib
- requires that the setxattr() function and the attr/xattr.h header are
- available. The default is to autodetect whether support is possible.
-
--disable-multithreaded-compression
By default, data will be compressed using multiple threads when writing
a WIM, unless only 1 processor is detected. Specify this option to
http://www.tuxera.com/community/ntfs-3g-download/ for more information.
The LZX decompressor (lzx-decompress.c) was originally based on code from the
-cabextract project (http://www.cabextract.org.uk) but has been rewritten.
+cabextract project (http://www.cabextract.org.uk). The LZX compressor
+(lzx-compress.c) was originally based on code written by Matthew Russotto
+(www.russotto.net/chm/). However I have since rewritten and made many
+improvements to both the decompressor and compressor.
-The LZX compressor (lzx-compress.c) was originally based on code written by
-Matthew Russotto (www.russotto.net/chm/) but has been rewritten. It now uses
-suffix array construction code from divsufsort
-(https://code.google.com/p/libdivsufsort/) and algorithms from 7-Zip as well as
-several published papers.
+lz_hash.c contains LZ77 match-finding code that uses hash chains. It is based
+on code from zlib but I have since rewritten it.
-lz_hash.c contains a hash-table-based LZ77 matchfinder that is based on code
-from zlib but has been rewritten. This code is applicable to XPRESS, LZX, and
-LZMS, all of which are partly based on LZ77 compression.
+lz_bt.c contains LZ77 match-finding code that uses binary trees. It is based on
+code from liblzma but I have since rewritten it.
A limited number of other free programs can handle some parts of the WIM
file format:
other archive formats). However, wimlib is designed specifically to handle
WIM files and provides features previously only available in Microsoft's
implementation, such as the ability to mount WIMs read-write as well as
- read-only, the ability to create LZX or XPRESS compressed WIMs, and the
- correct handling of security descriptors and hard links.
+ read-only, the ability to create compressed WIMs, and the correct handling
+ of security descriptors and hard links.
* ImagePyX (https://github.com/maxpat78/ImagePyX) is a Python program that
provides similar capabilities to wimlib-imagex. One thing to note, though,
is that it does not support compression and decompression by itself, but
LICENSE
As of version 1.0.0, wimlib and all programs and scripts distributed with it are
-released under the GNU GPL version 3.0 or later.
+released under the GNU GPL version 3.0 or later. See COPYING for details.
+Some individual source files are also released under more permissive licenses.
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.
git://wimlib.net / wimlib / blobdiff