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 SourceForge
+(http://sourceforge.net/projects/wimlib/files).
+
+ 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.
+
+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.
-A WIM file may be either stand-alone or split into multiple parts. Split WIMs
-are read-only and cannot be modified.
+A WIM archive may be either stand-alone or split into multiple parts.
-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.
+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
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's compression codecs usually outperform and outcompress their Microsoft
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.
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
+ LICENSE AND DISCLAIMER
See COPYING for information about the license.
git://wimlib.net / wimlib / blobdiff