4 This document attempts to establish guidelines for people making binary
7 It expresses the basic principles that the Wine developers have agreed
8 should be used when building Wine. It also attempts to highlight the areas
9 where there are different approaches to packaging Wine, so that the packager
10 can understand the different alternatives that have been considered and their
16 There are several terms and paths used in this document as place holders
17 for configurable values. Those terms are described here.
18 * WINEPREFIX: is the user's Wine configuration directory.
19 This is almost always ~/.wine, but can be overridden by
20 the user by setting the WINEPREFIX environment variable.
22 * PREFIX: is the prefix used when selecting an installation target.
23 The current default is /usr/local. This results in binary
24 installation into /usr/local/bin, library installation into
25 /usr/local/wine/lib, and so forth.
26 This value can be overridden by the packager. In fact, FHS 2.2
27 (http://www.pathname.com/fhs/) specifications suggest that a better
28 prefix is /opt/wine. Ideally, a packager would also allow the
29 installer to override this value.
31 * ETCDIR: is the prefix that Wine uses to find the global
32 configuration directory. This can be changed by the configure
33 option sysconfdir. The current default is $PREFIX/etc.
35 * WINDOWSDIR: is an important concept to Wine. This directory specifies
36 what directory corresponds to the root Windows directory
37 (e.g. C:\WINDOWS). This directory is specified by the user, in
38 the user's configuration file. Generally speaking, this directory
39 is either set to point at an empty directory, or it is set to point
40 at a Windows partition that has been mounted through the vfat driver.
41 NOTE: It is extremely important that the packager understand the
42 importance of WINDOWSDIR and convey this information and
43 choice to the end user.
48 An installation from a Wine package should:
49 * Install quickly and simply:
50 The initial installation should require no user input. An
51 'rpm -i wine.rpm' or 'apt-get install wine'
52 should suffice for initial installation.
54 * Work quickly and simply:
55 The user should be able to launch Solitaire
56 within minutes of downloading the Wine package.
58 * Comply with Filesystem Hierarchy Standard
59 A Wine installation should, as much as possible, comply
60 with the FHS standard (http://www.pathname.com/fhs/).
62 * Preserve flexibility
63 None of the flexibility built into Wine should
64 be hidden from the end user.
67 Come as preconfigured as possible, so the user does
68 not need to change any configuration files.
71 Use only as much diskspace as needed per user.
73 * Reduce support requirements.
74 A packaged version of Wine should be sufficiently easy to use and
75 have quick and easy access to FAQs and documentation such that
76 requests to the newsgroup and development group go down.
77 Further, it should be easy for users to capture good bug reports.
82 Successfully installing Wine requires:
83 * Much thought and work from the packager (1x)
85 * A configuration file
86 Wine will not run without a configuration file. Wine provides a
87 a sample config file and it can be found in documentation/samples.
88 Some packagers may attempt to provide (or dynamically generate) a
89 default configuration file. Some packagers may wish to rely on
90 winesetup to generate the configuration file.
93 A writeable C:\ directory structure on a per-user basis.
94 Applications do dump .ini file into C:\WINDOWS, installer
95 dump .exe/.dll/etc. files into C:\WINDOWS or C:\Program Files.
97 * An initial set of registry entries.
98 The current Wine standard is to use the regedit tool against
99 the 'winedefault.reg' file to generate a default registry.
100 The current preferred method of configuring/installing
101 Wine is to run /toos/wineinstall. There are several other
102 choices that could be made; registries can be imported from
103 a Windows partition. At this time, Wine does not completely
104 support a complex multi-user installation ala Windows NT,
105 but it could fairly readily.
108 Some special .dll and .exe files in the C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM
109 directory, since applications directly check for their presence.
115 - notepad : The windows Notepad replacement.
116 - progman : A Program Manager replacement.
117 - regedit : A command-line tool to edit your registry or for
118 important a windows registry to Wine.
119 - regsvr32 : A program to register/unregister .DLL's and .OCX files.
120 Only works on those dlls that can self-register.
121 - uninstaller: A program to uninstall installed Windows programs.
122 Like the Add/Remove Program in the windows control panel.
123 - wcmd : Wine's command line interpreter, a cmd.exe replacement.
124 - widl : Wine IDL compiler compiles (MS-RPC and DCOM) Interface
125 Definition Language files.
126 - wine : The main Wine executable. This program will load a Windows
127 binary and run it, relying upon the Wine shared object libraries.
128 - wineboot : This program is executed on startup of the first wine
129 process of a particular user.wineboot won't automatically run
130 when needed. Currently you have to manually run it after you
132 - winebuild : Winebuild is a tool used for building Winelib applications
133 (and by Wine itself) to allow a developer to compile a .spec file
135 - wineclipserv : The Wine Clipboard Server is a standalone XLib application
136 whose purpose is to manage the X selection when Wine exits.
137 - wineconsole : Render the output of CUI programs.
138 - winedbg : A application making use of the debugging API to allow
139 debugging of Wine or Winelib applications as well as Wine itself
140 (kernel and all DLLs).
141 - winedump : Dumps the imports and exports of NE and PE files.
142 - winefile : A clone of the win3x filemanager.
143 - winegcc/wineg++: Wrappers for gcc/g++ respectively, to make them behave
144 as MinGW's gcc. Used for porting apps over to Winelib.
145 - winemaker : Winemaker is a perl script which is designed to help you
146 bootstrap the conversion of your Windows projects to Winelib.
147 - winemine : A clone of "Windows Minesweeper" a demo WineLib app.
148 - winepath : A tool for converting between Windows paths and Unix paths
149 - wineserver : The Wine server is the process that manages resources,
150 coordinates threads, and provides synchronization and interprocess
151 communication primitives to Wine processes.
152 - wineshelllink : This shell script can be called by Wine in order to
153 propagate Desktop icon and menu creation requests out to a
154 GNOME or KDE (or other Window Managers).
155 - winewrap : Takes care of linking winelib applications. Linking with
156 Winelib is a complex process, winewrap makes it simple.
157 - winhelp : A Windows Help replacement.
158 - wmc : Wine Message Compiler it allows Windows message files to be
159 compiled into a format usable by Wine.
160 - wrc : the Wine Resource Compiler. A clone of Microsoft's rc.
162 * Shared Object Library Files
163 To obtain a current list of DLLs, run:
165 it the root of the Wine _build_ tree, after a successful build.
168 To obtain a current list of man files that need to be installed, run:
170 it the root of the Wine _build_ tree, after you have run ./configure.
173 An up to date list of includes can be found in the include/Makefile.in file.
175 * Documentation files
176 After building the documentation with:
177 cd documentation; make html
178 install all the files from: wine-user/, wine-devel/ and winelib-user/.
181 Wine also generates and depends on a number of dynamic
182 files, including user configuration files and registry files.
184 At the time of this writing, there was not a clear
185 consensus of where these files should be located, and how
186 they should be handled. This section attempts
187 to explain the alternatives clearly.
190 This file is the user local Wine configuration file.
191 At the time of this writing, if this file exists,
192 then no other configuration file is loaded.
195 This is the global Wine configuration file. It is only used
196 if the user running Wine has no local configuration file.
197 Global wine configuration is currently not possible;
198 this might get reenabled at some time.
199 Some packagers feel that this file should not be supplied,
200 and that only a wine.conf.default should be given here.
201 Other packagers feel that this file should be the predominant
202 file used, and that users should only shift to a local
203 configuration file if they need to. An argument has been
204 made that the local configuration file should inherit the
205 global configuration file. At this time, Wine does not do this;
206 please refer to the WineHQ discussion archives for the debate
208 This debate is addressed more completely below, in the
209 'Packaging Strategy' section.
212 In order to replicate the Windows registry system,
213 Wine stores registry entries in a series of files.
215 For an excellent overview of this issue, read this
216 http://www.winehq.com/News/2000-25.html#FTR
217 Wine Weekly News feature.
219 The bottom line is that, at Wine server startup,
220 Wine loads all registry entries into memory
221 to create an in memory image of the registry.
222 The order of files which Wine uses to load
223 registry entries is extremely important,
224 as it affects what registry entries are
225 actually present. The order is roughly that
226 .dat files from a Windows partion are loaded,
227 then global registry settings from ETCDIR,
228 and then finally local registry settings are
229 loaded from WINEPREFIX. As each set are loaded,
230 they can override the prior entries. Thus,
231 the local registry files take precedence.
233 Then, at exit (or at periodic intervals),
234 Wine will write either all registry entries
235 (or, with the default setting) changed
236 registry entries to files in the WINEPREFIX.
238 - WINEPREFIX/system.reg
239 This file contains the user's local copy of the
240 HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE registry hive. In general use, it will
241 contain only changes made to the default registry values.
243 - WINEPREFIX/user.reg
244 This file contains the user's local copy of the
245 HKEY_CURRENT_MACHINE registry hive. In general use, it will
246 contain only changes made to the default registry values.
248 - WINEPREFIX/userdef.reg
249 This file contains the user's local copy of the
250 HKEY_USERS\.Default registry hive. In general use, it will
251 contain only changes made to the default registry values.
253 - WINEPREFIX/cachedmetrics.[display]
254 This file contains font metrics for the given X display.
255 Generally, this cache is generated once at Wine start time.
256 cachedmetrics can be generated if absent.
257 You should note this can take a long time.
259 - ETCDIR/wine.systemreg
260 This file contains the global values for HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.
261 The values in this file can be overridden by the user's
262 local settings. The location of this directory is hardcoded
263 within wine, generally to /etc.
265 - ETCDIR/wine.userreg
266 This file contains the global values for HKEY_USERS.
267 The values in this file can be overridden by the user's
268 local settings. This file is likely to be deprecated in
269 favor of a global wine.userdef.reg that will only contain
272 * Important Files from a Windows Partition
273 Wine has the ability to use files from an installation of the
274 actual Microsoft Windows operating system. Generally these
275 files are loaded on a VFAT partition that is mounted under Linux.
277 This is probably the most important configuration detail.
278 The use of Windows registry and DLL files dramatically alters the
279 behaviour of Wine. If nothing else, pacakager have to make this
280 distinction clear to the end user, so that they can intelligently
281 choose their configuration.
283 - WINDOWSDIR/system32/system.dat
284 - WINDOWSDIR/system32/user.dat
287 * Windows Dynamic Link Libraries (WINDOWSDIR/system32/*.dll)
288 Wine has the ability to use the actual Windows DLL files
289 when running an application. An end user can configure
290 Wine so that Wine uses some or all of these DLL files
291 when running a given application.
296 There has recently been a lot of discussion on the Wine
297 development mailing list about the best way to build Wine packages.
299 There was a lot of discussion, and several diverging points of view.
300 This section of the document attempts to present the areas of common
301 agreement, and also to present the different approaches advocated on
304 * Distribution of Wine into packages
305 The most basic question to ask is given the Wine CVS tree,
306 what physical files are you, the packager, going to produce?
307 Are you going to produce only a wine.rpm (as Marcus has done),
308 or are you going to produce 6 Debian files (libwine, libwine-dev,
309 wine, wine-doc, wine-utils and winesetuptk) as Ove has done?
310 At this point, common practice is to adopt to the conventions
311 of the targeted distribution.
313 * Where to install files
314 This question is not really contested. It will vary
315 by distribution, and is really up to the packager.
316 As a guideline, the current 'make install' process
317 seems to behave such that if we pick a single PREFIX then:
318 - binary files go into PREFIX/bin
319 - library files go into PREFIX/lib/wine
320 - include files go into PREFIX/include/wine
321 - man pages go into PREFIX/share/man
322 - documentation files go into PREFIX/share/doc/wine-VERSION
324 You might also want to use the wine wrapper script winelauncher
325 that can be found in tools/ directory, as it has several important
326 advantages over directly invoking the wine binary.
327 See the Executable Files section for details.
329 * The question of /opt/wine
330 The FHS 2.2 specification suggests that Wine as a package
331 should be installed to /opt/wine. None of the existing packages
332 follow this guideline (today; check again tomorrow).
334 * What files to create
335 After installing the static and shareable files, the next
336 question the packager needs to ask is how much dynamic
337 configuration will be done, and what configuration
338 files should be created.
339 There are several approaches to this:
340 - Rely completely on user file space - install nothing
341 This approach relies upon the new winesetup utility
342 and the new ability of Wine to launch winesetup if no
343 configuration file is found. The basic concept is
344 that no global configuration files are created at
345 install time. Instead, Wine configuration files are
346 created on the fly by the winesetup program when Wine
347 is invoked. Further, winesetup creates default
348 Windows directories and paths that are stored
349 completely in the user's WINEPREFIX. This approach
350 has the benefit of simplicity in that all Wine files
351 are either stored under /opt/wine or under ~/.wine.
352 Further, there is only ever one Wine configuration
353 file. This approach, however, adds another level of
354 complexity. It does not allow Wine to run Solitaire
355 'out of the box'; the user must run the configuration
356 program first. Further, winesetup requires Tcl/Tk, a
357 requirement not beloved by some. Additionally, this
358 approach closes the door on multi user configurations
359 and presumes a single user approach.
361 - Build a reasonable set of defaults for the global wine.conf,
362 facilitate creation of a user's local Wine configuration.
363 This approach, best shown by Marcus, causes the
364 installation process to auto scan the system,
365 and generate a global wine.conf file with best
366 guess defaults. The OpenLinux packages follow
368 The keys to this approach are always putting
369 an existing Windows partition into the
370 path, and being able to run Solitaire
371 right out of the box.
372 Another good thing that Marcus does is he
373 detects a first time installation and
374 does some clever things to improve the
375 user's Wine experience.
376 A flaw with this approach, however, is it doesn't
377 give the user an obvious way to choose not to
378 use a Windows partition.
380 - Build a reasonable set of defaults for the global wine.conf,
381 and ask the user if possible
382 This approach, demonstrated by Ove, causes the
383 installation process to auto scan the system,
384 and generate a global wine.conf file with best
385 guess defaults. Because Ove built a Debian
386 package, he was able to further query debconf and
387 get permission to ask the user some questions,
388 allowing the user to decide whether or not to
389 use a Windows partition.
394 This section discusses the implementation of a Red Hat 8.0 .spec file.
395 For a current .spec file, please refer to any one of the existing SRPMs.
397 1. Building the package
399 Wine is configured the usual way (depending on your build environment).
400 The PREFIX is chosen using your application placement policy
401 (/usr/, /usr/X11R6/, /opt/wine/, or similar). The configuration files
402 (wine.conf, wine.userreg, wine.systemreg) are targeted for /etc/wine/
403 (rationale: FHS 2.2, multiple readonly configuration files of a package).
405 Example (split this into %build and %install section for rpm:
408 CFLAGS=$RPM_OPT_FLAGS ./configure --prefix=/usr/X11R6 --sysconfdir=/etc/wine/ --enable-dll
411 make install prefix=$BR/usr/X11R6/ sysconfdir=$BR/etc/wine/
412 install -d $BR/etc/wine/
413 install -m 644 wine.ini $BR/etc/wine/wine.conf
415 # Put all our DLLs in a separate directory. (this works only if you have a buildroot)
416 install -d $BR/usr/X11R6/lib/wine
417 mv $BR/usr/X11R6/lib/lib* $BR/usr/X11R6/lib/wine/
419 # the clipboard server is started on demand.
420 install -m 755 dlls/x11drv/wineclipsrv $BR/usr/X11R6/bin/
422 # The Wine server is needed.
423 install -m 755 server/wineserver $BR/usr/X11R6/bin/
425 Here we unfortunately do need to create wineuser.reg and winesystem.reg
426 from the Wine distributed winedefault.reg. This can be done using regedit
427 once for one example user and then reusing his WINEPREFIX/user.reg and
428 WINEPREFIX/system.reg files.
429 FIXME: this needs to be done better.
431 install -m 644 wine.sytemreg $BR/etc/wine/
432 install -m 644 wine.userreg $BR/etc/wine/
434 There are now a lot of libraries generated by the build process, so a
435 separate library directory should be used.
437 install -d 755 $BR/usr/X11R6/lib/
440 You will need to package the files:
442 $prefix/bin/wine, $prefix/bin/dosmod, $prefix/lib/wine/*
443 $prefix/man/man1/wine.1, $prefix/include/wine/*,
444 $prefix/bin/wineserver, $prefix/bin/wineclipsrv
447 %doc ... choose from the toplevel directory and documentation/
449 The post-install script:
451 if ! grep /usr/X11R6/lib/wine /etc/ld.so.conf >/dev/null; then
452 echo "/usr/X11R6/lib/wine" >> /etc/ld.so.conf
456 The post-uninstall script:
458 if [ "$1" = 0 ]; then
459 perl -ni -e 'print unless m:/usr/X11R6/lib/wine:;' /etc/ld.so.conf
463 2. Creating a good default configuration file.
465 For the rationales of needing as less input from the user as possible arises
466 the need for a very good configuration file. The one supplied with Wine is
467 currently lacking. We need:
470 - A for the floppy. Specify your distribution's default floppy mountpoint.
472 - C for the C:\ directory. Here we use the user's home directory, for most
473 applications do see C:\ as root-writeable directory of every windows
474 installation and this basically is it in the UNIX-user context.
475 Don't forget to identify environment variables as DOS ones (ie, surrounded by '%').
477 - R for the CD-Rom drive. Specify your distribution's default CD-ROM mountpoint.
479 - T for temporary storage. We do use /tmp/ (rationale: between process
480 temporary data belongs to /tmp/ , FHS 2.0)
482 - W for the original Windows installation. This drive points to the
483 WINDOWSDIR subdirectory of the original windows installation.
484 This avoids problems with renamed WINDOWSDIR directories (as for
485 instance lose95, win or sys\win95). During compile/package/install
486 we leave this to be / , it has to be configured after the package install.
487 - Z for the UNIX Root directory. This avoids any roblems with
488 "could not find drive for current directory" users occasionally complain
489 about in the newsgroup and the irc channel. It also makes the whole
490 directory structure browseable. The type of Z should be network,
491 so applications expect it to be readonly.
495 Windows=c:\windows\ (the windows/ subdirectory in the user's
497 System=c:\windows\system\ (the windows/system subdirectory in the user's
499 Path=c:\windows;c:\windows\system;c:\windows\system32;w:\;w:\system;w:\system32;
500 ; Using this trick we have in fact two windows installations in one, we
501 ; get the stuff from the readonly installation and can write to our own.
502 Temp=t:\ (the TEMP directory)
505 WineLook=win95 (just the coolest look ;)
507 * Possibly modify the [spooler], [serialports] and [parallelports] sections.
508 FIXME: possibly more, including printer stuff.
510 Add this prepared configuration file to the package.
512 3. Installing Wine for the system administrator
514 Install the package using the usual packager 'rpm -i wine.rpm'.
515 You may edit /etc/wine/wine.conf , [Drive W], to point to a
516 possible Windows installation right after the install. That's it.
518 Note that on Linux you should somehow try to add the unhide mount optioni
519 (see 'man mount') to the CD-ROM entry in /etc/fstab during package install,
520 as several stupid Windows programs mark some setup (!) files as hidden
521 (ISO9660) on CD-ROMs, which will greatly confuse users as they won't find
522 their setup files on the CD-ROMs as they were used on Windows systems when
523 unhide is not set ;-\ And of course the setup program will complain
524 that setup.ins or some other mess is missing... If you choose to do so,
525 then please make this change verbose to the admin.
527 Also make sure that the kernel you use includes the Joliet CD-ROM support,
528 for the very same reasons as given above (no long filenames due to missing
529 Joliet, files not found).
531 4. Installing Wine for the user
533 The user will need to run a setup script before the first invocation of Wine.
535 * Copy /etc/wine/wine.conf for user modification.
536 * Allow specification of the original windows installation to use
537 (which modifies the copied wine.conf file).
538 * Create the windows directory structure (c:\windows, c:\windows\system,
539 c:\windows\Start Menu\Programs, c:\Program Files, c:\Desktop, etc.)
540 * Symlink all .dll and .exe files from the original windows installation
541 to the windows directory. Why? Some programs reference
542 "%windowsdir%/file.dll" or "%systemdir%/file.dll" directly and fail
543 if they are not present. This will give a huge number of symlinks, yes.
544 However, if an installer later overwrites one of those files, it will
545 overwrite the symlink (so that the file now lies in the windows/
546 subdirectory). FIXME: Not sure this is needed for all files.
547 * On later invocation the script might want to compare regular files in
548 the user's windows directories and in the global windows directories
549 and replace same files by symlinks (to avoid diskspace problems).
554 Written in 1999 by Marcus Meissner <marcus@jet.franken.de>
555 Updated in 2000 by Jeremy White <jwhite@codeweavers.com>
556 Updated in 2002 by Andreas Mohr <andi@rhlx01.fht-esslingen.de>
557 Updated in 2003 by Tom Wickline <twickline2@triad.rr.com>
558 Updated in 2003 by Dimitrie O. Paun <dpaun@rogers.com>