Update README and README.WINDOWS

[wimlib] / README

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@@ -2,16 +2,15 @@
 
 This is wimlib version 1.7.1-BETA (June 2014).  wimlib is a C library for
 creating, modifying, extracting, and mounting files in the Windows Imaging
 
 This is wimlib version 1.7.1-BETA (June 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
-with a free implementation of ImageX called "wimlib-imagex" for both UNIX-like
-systems and Windows.
+Format (WIM files).  wimlib and its command-line frontend 'wimlib-imagex'
+provide a free and cross-platform alternative to Microsoft's WIMGAPI, ImageX,
+and DISM.

 
                                   INSTALLATION
 
 
                                   INSTALLATION
 

-To install wimlib and wimlib-imagex on Windows you simply need to download and
-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 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
 
 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


@@ -309,47 +308,42 @@ This section documents the most important options that may be passed to the
 
                                   PORTABILITY
 
 
                                   PORTABILITY
 

-wimlib has primarily been tested on Linux and Windows (primarily Windows 7, but
-also Windows XP and Windows 8).
+wimlib works on both UNIX-like systems (Linux, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, etc.) and
+Windows (XP and later).

 
 

-wimlib may work on FreeBSD and Mac OS X.  However, this is not well tested.  If
-you do not have libntfs-3g 2011-4-12 or later available, you must configure
-wimlib with --without-ntfs-3g.  On FreeBSD, before mounting a WIM you need to
-load the POSIX message queue module (run `kldload mqueuefs').
+On UNIX-like systems other than Linux, you must compile --without-fuse.
+In addition, --without-ntfs-3g and --without-libcrypto are needed if the
+corresponding libraries are not available on your system.

 
 

-The code has primarily been tested on x86 and x86_64 CPUs, but it's written to
-be portable to other architectures and I've also tested it on ARM.  However,
-although the code is written to correctly deal with endianness, it has not yet
-actually been tested on a big-endian architecture.
+wimlib works on x86 and x86_64, but it should work on any other GCC-supported
+32-bit or 64-bit architecture.

 
                                    REFERENCES
 
 The WIM file format is partially specified in a document that can be found in
 the Microsoft Download Center.  However, this document really only provides an
 
                                    REFERENCES
 
 The WIM file format is partially specified in a document that can be found in
 the Microsoft Download Center.  However, this document really only provides an

-overview of the format and is not a formal specification.
+overview of the format and is not a formal specification.  It also does not
+cover later extensions of the format, such as solid blocks.

 
 With regards to the supported compression formats:
 
 - Microsoft has official documentation for XPRESS that is of reasonable quality.
 
 With regards to the supported compression formats:
 
 - Microsoft has official documentation for XPRESS that is of reasonable quality.

-- Microsoft has official documentation for LZX but it contains errors.
+- Microsoft has official documentation for LZX, but in two different documents,
+  neither of which is completely applicable to its use in the WIM format, and
+  the first of which contains multiple errors.

 - There does not seem to be any official documentation for LZMS, so my comments
   and code in src/lzms-decompress.c may in fact be the best documentation
   available for this particular compression format.
 
 - There does not seem to be any official documentation for LZMS, so my comments
   and code in src/lzms-decompress.c may in fact be the best documentation
   available for this particular compression format.
 

+The algorithms used by wimlib's compression and decompression codecs are
+inspired by a variety of sources, including open source projects and computer
+science papers.
+

 The code in ntfs-3g_apply.c and ntfs-3g_capture.c uses the NTFS-3g library,
 which is a library for reading and writing to NTFS filesystems (the filesystem
 used by recent versions of Windows).  See
 http://www.tuxera.com/community/ntfs-3g-download/ for more information.
 
 The code in ntfs-3g_apply.c and ntfs-3g_capture.c uses the NTFS-3g library,
 which is a library for reading and writing to NTFS filesystems (the filesystem
 used by recent versions of Windows).  See
 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).  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.
-
-lz_binary_trees.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:
 
 A limited number of other free programs can handle some parts of the WIM
 file format:
 


@@ -357,8 +351,9 @@ 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
     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 compressed WIMs, and the correct handling
-    of security descriptors and hard links.
+    read-only, the ability to create compressed WIMs, the correct handling of
+    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
   * 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


@@ -386,7 +381,3 @@ functionality.
 
 wimlib comes with no warranty whatsoever.  Please submit a bug report (to
 ebiggers3@gmail.com) if you find a bug in wimlib and/or wimlib-imagex.
 
 wimlib comes with no warranty whatsoever.  Please submit a bug report (to
 ebiggers3@gmail.com) if you find a bug in wimlib and/or wimlib-imagex.

-
-Be aware that some parts of the WIM file format are poorly documented or even
-completely undocumented, so I've just had to do the best I can to read and write
-WIMs that appear to be compatible with Microsoft's software.