X-Git-Url: https://wimlib.net/git/?p=wimlib;a=blobdiff_plain;f=README;h=fcc3e906e64035741e3cbedc35edc5107b58a9a2;hp=618296d9bc25b6c1ccca20cc03702cb54c089514;hb=6f1261c57e213d6f12cb7aa8f858f2971bee687e;hpb=1a8b4a9f6e24d3ebbd75a86f73955e0f3f5e1785 diff --git a/README b/README index 618296d9..fcc3e906 100644 --- a/README +++ b/README @@ -1,10 +1,10 @@ INTRODUCTION -This is wimlib version 1.4.2 (June 2013). wimlib is a C library for creating, +This is wimlib version 1.5.2 (November 2013). wimlib is a C library for creating, modifying, extracting, and mounting files in the Windows Imaging Format (WIM files). These files are normally created by using the `imagex.exe' utility on Windows, but wimlib is distributed with a free implementation of ImageX called -"wimlib-imagex" for both UNIX and Windows. +"wimlib-imagex" for both UNIX-like systems and Windows. INSTALLATION @@ -12,9 +12,11 @@ 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 UNIX (with Linux being the primary -supported and tested platform), you must compile it from the source code. At -some point I might start posting RPMs and Debian packages for convenience. +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 +for Debian and RPM packaging are in the debian/ and rpm/ directories. WIM FILES @@ -22,7 +24,7 @@ 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 two compression formats: LZX and -XPRESS. Both are supported by wimlib. +XPRESS *. Both 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 @@ -33,6 +35,10 @@ images. A WIM file may be either stand-alone or split into multiple parts. Split WIMs are read-only and cannot be modified. +* Note: The Windows 8 WIMGAPI apparently adds a third format, LZMS, but it is + not documented and is incompatible with ImageX and Dism. It is unclear if + this new format is actually being used for anything. + IMAGEX IMPLEMENTATION wimlib itself is a C library, and it provides a documented public API (See: @@ -40,14 +46,15 @@ http://wimlib.sourceforge.net) 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 -as additional capabilities. wimlib-imagex works on both UNIX and Windows, -although some features differ between the platforms. +as additional capabilities. wimlib-imagex works on both UNIX-like systems and +Windows, although some features differ between the platforms. Run `wimlib-imagex' with no arguments to see an overview of the available commands and their syntax. For additional documentation: - * If you have installed wimlib-imagex on UNIX, you will find further - documentation in the man pages; run `man wimlib-imagex' to get started. + * If you have installed wimlib-imagex on a UNIX-like system, you will find + further documentation in the man pages; run `man wimlib-imagex' to get + started. * If you have downloaded the Windows binary distribution, you will find the documentation for wimlib-imagex in PDF format in the "doc" directory, @@ -59,10 +66,10 @@ commands and their syntax. For additional documentation: wimlib (and wimlib-imagex) 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. +Microsoft's software, while by default 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 x86_64 Windows PE image. Note: these timings were done on Windows @@ -81,6 +88,12 @@ even better performance on Linux. wimlib-imagex (v1.4.0, 2 threads): 18 sec 51 sec Microsoft imagex.exe: 25 sec 93 sec +The above LZX values are using the default LZX compressor. wimlib v1.5.2 +introduced a new experimental LZX compressor which can be enabled by passing +'--compress-slow' to `wimlib-imagex capture' or `wimlib-imagex optimize'. This +compressor is much slower but compresses the data slightly more --- currently +usually to within a fraction of a percent of the results from imagex.exe. + NTFS SUPPORT WIM images may contain data, such as alternate data streams and @@ -109,9 +122,9 @@ WIM file, and then re-applied later. WINDOWS PE A major use for wimlib and wimlib-imagex is to create customized images of -Windows PE, the Windows Preinstallation Environment, on either UNIX or Windows -without having to rely on Microsoft's software and its restrictions and -limitations. +Windows PE, the Windows Preinstallation Environment, on either UNIX-like systems +or Windows without having to rely on Microsoft's software and its restrictions +and limitations. Windows PE is a lightweight version of Windows that can run entirely from memory and can be used to install Windows from local media or a network drive or @@ -122,21 +135,22 @@ 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 if you install either the `cabextract' or `p7zip' programs. +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 Windows PE. -A shell script `mkwinpeimg' is distributed with wimlib on UNIX to ease the -process of creating and customizing a bootable Windows PE image. +A shell script `mkwinpeimg' is distributed with wimlib on UNIX-like systems to +ease the process of creating and customizing a bootable Windows PE image. DEPENDENCIES This section documents the dependencies of wimlib and the programs distributed -with it, when building for UNIX from source. If you have downloaded the Windows -binary distribution of wimlib and wimlib-imagex then all dependencies were -already included and this section is irrelevant. +with it, when building for a UNIX-like system from source. If you have +downloaded the Windows binary distribution of wimlib and wimlib-imagex then all +dependencies were already included and this section is irrelevant. * libxml2 (required) This is a commonly used free library to read and write XML files. You @@ -181,7 +195,7 @@ already included and this section is irrelevant. CONFIGURATION This section documents the most important options that may be passed to the -"configure" script when building the UNIX version from source: +"configure" script when building from source: --without-ntfs-3g If libntfs-3g is not available or is not version 2011-4-12 or later, @@ -229,7 +243,10 @@ 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 has not been tested on big-endian CPU architectures. +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. REFERENCES @@ -292,8 +309,8 @@ released under the GNU GPL version 3.0 or later. wimlib is independently developed and does not contain any code, data, or files copyrighted by Microsoft. It is not known to be affected by any patents. -On UNIX, if you do not want wimlib to be dynamically linked with libcrypto -(OpenSSL), configure with --without-libcrypto. This replaces the SHA1 +On UNIX-like systems, if you do not want wimlib to be dynamically linked with +libcrypto (OpenSSL), configure with --without-libcrypto. This replaces the SHA1 implementation with built-in code and there will be no difference in functionality.