WIMLIB
-This is wimlib version 1.2.0 (November 2012). wimlib can be used to read,
+This is wimlib version 1.2.5 (February 2013). wimlib can be used to read,
write, and mount files in the Windows Imaging Format (WIM files). These files
are normally created by using the `imagex.exe' utility on Windows, but this
library provides a free implementation of imagex for UNIX-based systems.
COMPRESSION RATIO
-wimlib can create XPRESS or LZX compressed WIM archives. As of wimlib v1.0.3,
-the XPRESS compression ratio is slightly better than that provided by
-Microsoft's software, while the LZX compression ratio is approaching that of
-Microsoft's software but is not quite there yet. Running time is as good as or
-better than Microsoft's software, especially with multithreaded compression,
-available in v1.1.0 and later.
+wimlib can create XPRESS or LZX compressed WIM archives. Currently, the XPRESS
+compression ratio is slightly better than that provided by Microsoft's software,
+while the LZX compression ratio is approaching that of Microsoft's software but
+is not quite there yet. Running time is as good as or better than Microsoft's
+software, especially with multithreaded compression, available in wimlib v1.1.0
+and later.
The following tables compare the compression ratio and performance for creating
a compressed Windows PE image (disk usage of about 524 MB, uncompressed WIM size
Table 1. WIM size
XPRESS Compression LZX Compression
- wimlib imagex (v1.0.2): 145,283,871 bytes 139,288,293 bytes
- wimlib imagex (v1.0.3): 139,288,293 bytes 131,379,869 bytes
+ wimlib imagex (v1.2.1): 138,971,353 bytes 131,379,943 bytes
Microsoft imagex.exe: 140,406,981 bytes 127,249,176 bytes
Table 2. Time to create WIM
XPRESS Compression LZX Compression
- wimlib imagex (v1.0.2): 18 sec 49 sec
- wimlib imagex (v1.0.3): 19 sec 30 sec
- wimlib imagex (v1.1.0, 2 threads): 11 sec 17 sec
+ wimlib imagex (v1.2.1, 2 threads): 11 sec 17 sec
Microsoft imagex.exe: 25 sec 89 sec
NTFS SUPPORT
wimlib's `configure' script:
--without-ntfs-3g
- If libntfs-3g is not available or is not version 2011-4-12 or later, we
- can build without it. wimlib will then not be able to apply or capture
- images directly to NTFS volumes.
+ If libntfs-3g is not available or is not version 2011-4-12 or later,
+ wimlib can be built without it, in which case it will not be possible to
+ apply or capture images directly to/from NTFS volumes.
--without-fuse
If libfuse or the FUSE kernel module is not available, wimlib can be
compiled with --without-fuse. This will remove the ability to mount and
- unmount WIM files. wimlib_mount() and wimlib_unmount() will fail with
- WIMLIB_ERR_UNSUPPORTED.
+ unmount WIM files.
--without-libcrypto
Build in functions for SHA1 rather than using external SHA1 functions
--enable-xattr, --disable-xattr
Enable or disable support for the extended-attributes interface to NTFS
- alternate data streams in mounted WIMs. To support these, we require
- the setxattr() function and the attr/xattr.h header be available. The
- default is to autodetect whether support is possible.
+ alternate data streams in mounted WIMs. To support these, wimlib
+ requires that the setxattr() function and the attr/xattr.h header are
+ available. The default is to autodetect whether support is possible.
--disable-multithreaded-compression
By default, data will be compressed using multiple threads when writing
Only use this if the build target supports the SSSE3 instructions.
--disable-custom-memory-allocator
- If this option is given, MALLOC(), FREE(), CALLOC(), and STRDUP() will
- directly call the appropriate functions in the C library.
- wimlib_set_memory_allocator() will fail with WIMLIB_ERR_UNSUPPORTED.
+ If this option is given, a very small amount of space will be saved by
+ removing support for the wimlib_set_memory_allocator() function. imagex
+ will be unaffected.
--disable-verify-compression
- Unless this option is given, every time wimlib compresses a data block
- it will decompress it into a temporary buffer and abort() the program
- with an error message if the decompressed data does not exactly match
- the original data. This is to find bugs.
+ Unless this option is given, every time wimlib compresses a data block,
+ it will decompress it into a temporary buffer and abort the program with
+ an error message if the decompressed data does not exactly match the
+ original data. This only makes compression about 10% slower. However,
+ this checking can probably be safely disabled because there are no known
+ bugs in the compression code, and the SHA1 message digest of every
+ extracted file is checked anyway.
--disable-error-messages
- Removes all error messages from the library. If left in, they still
- have to explicitly turned on with wimlib_set_print_errors() in order to
- see them. Also, error codes will still be returned regardless of
- whether error messages are printed or not.
-
- If --disable-error-messages is given, wimlib_set_print_errors() will
- fail with WIMLIB_ERR_UNSUPPORTED if the action is to turn error messages
- on.
+ Save some space by removing all error messages from the library.
--disable-assertions
- Remove all assertions. Without this option, wimlib will abort() the
- program if an assertion fails. An assertion failure should only occur
- if there is a bug in the library.
+ Remove all assertions, even the ones that are included by default.
+
+--enable-more-assertions
+ Enable assertions that are not included by default.
--enable-debug
Include debugging messages. Only use this option if you have found a
It has been tested on x86 (32-bit) GNU/Linux occasionally.
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 with
---without-ntfs-3g. On FreeBSD, before mounting a WIM you need to load the POSIX
-message queue module (run `kldload mqueuefs').
+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').
-wimlib should work on big endian machines but it has not been tested.
+The code pays attention to endianness, so it should work on big-endian
+architectures, but I've never tested this so do not expect it to work.
There are no plans to port wimlib to Windows since the programming interface on
Windows is very different and Microsoft's imagex.exe is already available.
recent versions of Windows). See
http://www.tuxera.com/community/ntfs-3g-download/ for more information.
-lzx-decomp.c, the code to decompress WIM file resources that are compressed
+lzx-decompress.c, the code to decompress WIM file resources that are compressed
using LZX compression, is originally based on code from the cabextract project
(http://www.cabextract.org.uk).
-lzx-comp.c, the code to compress WIM file resources using LZX compression, is
-originally based on code written by Matthew Russotto (www.russotto.net/chm/).
+lzx-compress.c, the code to compress WIM file resources using LZX compression,
+is originally based on code written by Matthew Russotto (www.russotto.net/chm/).
-lz.c, the code to find LZ77 matches (used for both XPRESS and LZX compression),
+lz77.c, the code to find LZ77 matches (used for both XPRESS and LZX compression),
is based on code from zlib.
A very limited number of other free programs can handle some parts of the WIM
You can see the documentation about Microsoft's version of the imagex program at
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc749447(v=ws.10).aspx, so you can
-see how it compares.
+see how it compares to the version provided by this library.
GNU/Linux equivalents of WIM format
probably will be OpenSSL. Some people believe that GPL code cannot be linked to
OpenSSL without a linking exception. As far as I know, I cannot officially
include a linking exception with the license of this library because several
-files could be considered derived works of LGPL code copyrighted by others. If
-you believe this to be a problem, configure with --without-libcrypto to avoid
+files could be considered derived works of code copyrighted by others. If you
+believe this to be a problem, configure with --without-libcrypto to avoid
linking with OpenSSL. There is no difference in functionality--- there will
just be stand-alone SHA1 message digest code built into the library.
git://wimlib.net / wimlib / blobdiff