INTRODUCTION
-This is wimlib version 1.8.1 (May 2015). wimlib is a C library for
+This is wimlib version 1.9.1 (March 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 SourceForge
-(http://sourceforge.net/projects/wimlib/files).
+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.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
-
-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 (v1.8.0) | WIMGAPI (Windows 8.1) |
- =============================================================================
- | 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 |
- =============================================================================
-
-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 8.1 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 (v1.8.0), 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) | 789,296 |
- | 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 (WIMGAPI, LZX) | 651,866 |
- | WIM (wimlib, LZX normal) | 624,634 |
- | WIM (wimlib, LZX slow) | 620,728 |
- | 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
Windows-specific data are ordinarily ignored; however, there is also special
support for capturing and extracting images directly to/from unmounted NTFS
volumes. This was made possible with the help of libntfs-3g from the
- NTFS-3g project.
+ NTFS-3G project.
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
As much code as possible is shared among all supported platforms, but there
necessarily are some differences in what features are supported on each platform
and how they are implemented. Most notable is that file tree scanning and
-extraction are implemented separately for Windows, UNIX, and UNIX (NTFS-3g
+extraction are implemented separately for Windows, UNIX, and UNIX (NTFS-3G
mode), to ensure a fast and feature-rich implementation of each platform/mode.
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.
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,
+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.
such as device nodes and FIFOs. Actually, I use it to back up my own files on
Linux!
+ 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