INTRODUCTION
-This is wimlib version 1.8.3-BETA (September 2015). wimlib is a C library for
+This is wimlib version 1.9.1-BETA (February 2016). 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
files are converted from UNIX-style "man pages", they do document
Windows-specific behavior when appropriate.
- COMPRESSION RATIO
-
-wimlib (and wimlib-imagex) can create XPRESS, LZX, or LZMS compressed WIM files.
-wimlib's compression codecs usually outperform and outcompress their Microsoft
-equivalents. Although results will vary depending on the data being compressed,
-the table below shows results for a common use case: creating an x86 Windows PE
-image ("boot.wim"). Each row shows the compression type, the size of the
-resulting WIM file in bytes, and the time it took to create the file. When
-possible, the results with the Microsoft equivalent are included.
-
- =============================================================================
- | Compression || wimlib (v1.8.3) | WIMGAPI (Windows 10) |
- =============================================================================
- | 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:
- [1] '--compress=none' for wimlib-imagex; '/compress:none' for DISM.
-
- [2] '--compress=XPRESS' for wimlib-imagex; '/compress:fast' for DISM.
- Compression chunk size defaults to 32768 bytes in both cases.
-
- [3] '--compress=XPRESS:80' for wimlib-imagex; no known equivalent for DISM.
- Compression chunk size defaults to 32768 bytes.
-
- [4] '--compress=LZX:20' for wimlib-imagex; no known equivalent for DISM.
- Compression chunk size defaults to 32768 bytes.
-
- [5] '--compress=LZX' or '--compress=LZX:50' or no option for wimlib-imagex;
- '/compress:maximum' for DISM.
- Compression chunk size defaults to 32768 bytes in both cases.
-
- [6] '--compress=LZX:100' for wimlib-imagex; no known equivalent for DISM.
- Compression chunk size defaults to 32768 bytes.
-
- [7] '--compress=LZMS' for wimlib-imagex; no known equivalent for DISM.
- Compression chunk size defaults to 131072 bytes.
-
- [8] '--solid' for wimlib-imagex. Should be '/compress:recovery' for DISM,
- but only works for /Export-Image, not /Capture-Image. Compression chunk
- size in solid resources defaults to 67108864 bytes in both cases.
-
- [9] '--wimboot' for wimlib-imagex; '/wimboot' for DISM.
- This is really XPRESS compression with 4096 byte chunks, so the same as
- '--compress=XPRESS --chunk-size=4096'.
-
- [10] '--wimboot --compress=XPRESS:80' for wimlib-imagex;
- no known equivalent for DISM.
- Same format as [9], but trying harder to get a good compression ratio.
-
-Note: wimlib-imagex's --compress option also accepts the "fast", "maximum", and
-"recovery" aliases for XPRESS, LZX, and LZMS, respectively.
-
-Testing environment:
-
- - 64 bit binaries
- - 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 (v1.8.3), WIMGAPI (Windows 8.1), and some other
-formats/programs:
-
- =====================================================
- | Format | Size (bytes) |
- =====================================================
- | tar | 2,826,240 |
- | WIM (WIMGAPI, None) | 2,814,254 |
- | WIM (wimlib, None) | 2,814,216 |
- | WIM (WIMGAPI, XPRESS) | 825,536 |
- | 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) | 686,420 |
- | WIM (WIMGAPI, LZX) | 651,866 |
- | 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 |
- | WIM (WIMGAPI, LZMS solid) | 521,366 |
- | WIM (wimlib, LZMS solid) | 515,800 |
- | tar.xz (xz, default) | 486,916 |
- | tar.xz (xz, -9) | 486,904 |
- | 7z (7-zip, default) | 484,700 |
- | 7z (7-zip, -9) | 483,239 |
- =====================================================
-
-Note: WIM does even better on directory trees containing duplicate files, which
-the Canterbury corpus doesn't have.
+ COMPRESSION
+
+wimlib (and wimlib-imagex) can create XPRESS, LZX, and LZMS compressed WIM
+archives. wimlib's compression codecs usually outperform and outcompress their
+closed-source Microsoft equivalents. Multiple compression levels and chunk
+sizes as well as solid mode compression are supported. Compression is
+multithreaded by default. Detailed benchmark results and descriptions of the
+algorithms used can be found at https://wimlib.net/compression.html.
NTFS SUPPORT
git://wimlib.net / wimlib / blobdiff