.TH WIMDELETE "1" "February 2024" "wimlib 1.14.4" "User Commands"
.SH NAME
wimdelete \- Delete an image from a WIM archive
.SH SYNOPSIS
\fBwimdelete\fR \fIWIMFILE\fR \fIIMAGE\fR [\fIOPTION\fR...]
.SH DESCRIPTION
\fBwimdelete\fR, or equivalently \fBwimlib-imagex delete\fR, deletes the
specified image from the Windows Imaging (WIM) archive \fIWIMFILE\fR.
.PP
\fIIMAGE\fR specifies the WIM image in \fIWIMFILE\fR to delete.  It may be the
1-based index of an image, the name of an image, or the keyword "all" to specify
all images.  You can use \fBwiminfo\fR(1) to list the images contained in
\fIWIMFILE\fR.
.SH NOTES
By default, \fBwimdelete\fR rebuilds the WIM with all unnecessary file data
removed.  This is different from Microsoft's ImageX and DISM, which only will
delete the directory tree metadata and XML data for this operation.  Use
\fB--soft\fR if you want the other kind of delete.
.PP
wimlib allows you to delete all the images from a WIM and have a WIM with 0
images, although such a file may not be very useful.
.PP
\fBwimdelete\fR does not support split WIMs.
.SH OPTIONS
.TP 6
\fB--check\fR
Before deleting the image, verify the WIM's integrity if extra integrity
information is present.  In addition, include extra integrity information in the
modified WIM, even if it was not present before.
.TP
\fB--include-integrity\fR
Include extra integrity information in the modified WIM, i.e. like \fB--check\fR
but don't do any verification beforehand.
.TP
\fB--soft\fR
Perform a "soft delete".  Specifying this flag overrides the default behavior of
rebuilding the entire WIM after deleting an image.  Instead, only minimal
changes to correctly remove the image from the WIM will be taken.  In
particular, all file resources will be left alone, even if they are no longer
referenced.  This may not be what you want, because no space will be saved by
deleting an image in this way.  However, \fBwimoptimize\fR can later be used to
rebuild a WIM file that has had images soft-deleted from it.
.TP
\fB--unsafe-compact\fR
Compact the WIM archive in-place, eliminating "holes".  This is efficient, but
in general this option should \fInot\fR be used because a failed or interrupted
compaction will corrupt the WIM archive.  For more information, see the
documentation for this option to \fBwimoptimize\fR(1).
.SH EXAMPLES
Delete the first image from 'boot.wim':
.RS
.PP
wimdelete boot.wim 1
.RE
.PP
.SH SEE ALSO
.BR wimlib-imagex (1)
.BR wiminfo (1)
.BR wimoptimize (1)