INTRODUCTION
-This is wimlib version 1.7.5-BETA (January 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,
INSTALLATION
-To install wimlib and wimlib-imagex on Windows, simply download and extract the
-ZIP file containing the latest binaries from the SourceForge page
-(http://sourceforge.net/projects/wimlib/). You probably have already done this!
-
-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
+To install wimlib and wimlib-imagex on UNIX-like systems, you can compile from
+source (e.g. './configure && make && sudo make install'). Alternatively, check
+if a package has already been prepared for your operating system. Example files
for Debian and RPM packaging are in the debian/ and rpm/ directories.
- WIM FILES
+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 https://wimlib.net.
+
+ WIM FILES
A Windows Imaging (WIM) file is an archive designed primarily for archiving
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 multiple compression formats,
+archives may be compressed. WIM archives support multiple compression formats,
including LZX, XPRESS, and LZMS. All these formats 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
-the WIM. Each image has a name as well as a 1-based index in the WIM file. To
-save space, WIM archives automatically combine all duplicate files across all
-images.
+A WIM archive contains one or more "images", each of which is a logically
+independent directory tree. Each image has a 1-based index and usually a name.
-A WIM file may be either stand-alone or split into multiple parts. Split WIMs
-are read-only and cannot be modified.
+WIM archives provide data deduplication at the level of full file contents. In
+other words, each unique "file contents" is only stored once in the archive,
+regardless of how many files have that contents across all images.
-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.
+A WIM archive may be either stand-alone or split into multiple parts.
+
+An update of the WIM format --- first added by Microsoft for Windows 8 ---
+supports solid-mode compression. This refers to files being compressed together
+(e.g. as in a .tar.xz or .7z archive) rather than separately (e.g. as in a .zip
+archive). This usually produces a much better compression ratio. Solid
+archives are sometimes called "ESD files" by Microsoft and may have the ".esd"
+file extension rather than ".wim". They are supported in wimlib since v1.6.0.
IMAGEX IMPLEMENTATION
wimlib itself is a C library, and it provides a documented public API (See:
-http://wimlib.sourceforge.net) 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
+ COMPRESSION RATIO
wimlib (and wimlib-imagex) can create XPRESS, LZX, or LZMS compressed WIM files.
-wimlib includes its own compression codecs and does not use the compression API
-available on some versions of Windows.
-
-I have gradually been improving the compression codecs in wimlib. For all three
-codecs, they now usually outperform and outcompress the equivalent Microsoft
-implementations. Although results will vary depending on the data being
-compressed, in the table below I present the results for a common use case:
-compressing an x86 Windows PE image. Each row displays the compression type,
-the size of the resulting WIM file in bytes, and how many seconds it took to
-create the file. When applicable, the results with the equivalent Microsoft
-implementation in WIMGAPI is included.
+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 (v1.7.5-BETA) | 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 (v1.7.5), 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
and --without-ntfs-3g when building for Windows.
--without-fuse
- The --without-fuse option completely disables support for mounting WIM
- images. This removes dependencies on libfuse, librt, and libattr. The
- wimmount, wimmountrw, and wimunmount commands will not work.
+ The --without-fuse option disables support for mounting WIM images.
+ This removes dependencies on libfuse, librt, and libattr. The wimmount,
+ wimmountrw, and wimunmount commands will not work.
The default is --with-fuse when building for Linux, and --without-fuse
otherwise.
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.
security descriptors and hard links, support for LZMS compression, and
support for solid archives.
* 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
- instead relies on external native code, such as the codecs from wimlib.
+ provides some capabilities of wimlib-imagex, with the help of external
+ compression codecs.
If you are looking for an archive format that provides features similar to WIM
but was designed primarily for UNIX, you may want to consider SquashFS
such as device nodes and FIFOs. Actually, I use it to back up my own files on
Linux!
- LICENSE AND DISCLAIMER
+ HISTORY
+
+wimlib was originally a project started by Carl Thijssen for use on Linux in the
+Ultimate Deployment Appliance (http://www.ultimatedeployment.org/). Since then
+the code has been entirely rewritten and improved (main author: Eric Biggers).
+Windows support has been available since version 1.3.0 (March 2013). A list of
+version-to-version changes can be found in the NEWS file.
+
+ LICENSE AND DISCLAIMER
See COPYING for information about the license.
git://wimlib.net / wimlib / blobdiff