1. INTRODUCTION Wine is a program which allows running Microsoft Windows programs (including DOS, Windows 3.x and Win32 executables) on Unix. It consists of a program loader which loads and executes a Microsoft Windows binary, and a library (called Winelib) that implements Windows API calls using their Unix or X11 equivalents. The library may also be used for porting Win32 code into native Unix executables. Wine is free software, released under the GNU LGPL; see the file LICENSE for the details. 2. QUICK START Whenever you compile from source, it is recommended to use the Wine Installer to build and install Wine. From the top-level directory of the Wine source (which contains this file), run: ./tools/wineinstall Run programs as "wine program". For more information and problem resolution, read the rest of this file, the Wine man page, and especially the wealth of information found at http://www.winehq.org. 3. REQUIREMENTS To compile and run Wine, you must have one of the following: Linux version 2.0.36 or above FreeBSD 6.2 or later Solaris x86 2.5 or later NetBSD-current Mac OS X 10.4 or later As Wine requires kernel-level thread support to run, only the operating systems mentioned above are supported. Other operating systems which support kernel threads may be supported in the future. Linux info: While Linux 2.2.x should still work and Linux 2.0.x may still work (older 2.0.x versions had thread-related crashes), it's best to have a current kernel such as 2.4.x or 2.6.x. FreeBSD info: Wine should build on FreeBSD 5.x, but versions before FreeBSD 7.0 will generally not work properly. FreeBSD 6.3 has patches available to allow Wine to run. See for more information. More information can be found in the FreeBSD ports tree at . Solaris info: You will most likely need to build Wine with the GNU toolchain (gcc, gas, etc.). Warning : installing gas does *not* ensure that it will be used by gcc. Recompiling gcc after installing gas or symlinking cc, as and ld to the gnu tools is said to be necessary. NetBSD info: Make sure you have the USER_LDT, SYSVSHM, SYSVSEM, and SYSVMSG options turned on in your kernel. Mac OS X info: You need Xcode 2.4 or later to build properly on x86. Supported file systems: Wine should run on most file systems. However, Wine will fail to start if umsdos is used for the /tmp directory. A few compatibility problems have also been reported using files accessed through Samba. Also, NTFS does not provide all the file system features needed by some applications. Using a native Linux file system such as ext3 is recommended. Basic requirements: You need to have the X11 development include files installed (called xlib6g-dev in Debian and XFree86-devel in Red Hat). Build tool requirements: On x86 Systems gcc >= 2.7.2 is required. Versions earlier than 2.7.2.3 may have problems when certain files are compiled with optimization, often due to problems with header file management. Of course you also need "make" (most likely GNU make). You also need flex version 2.5 or later and bison. Optional support libraries: Run ./configure --verbose to see the optional libraries that could be used but aren't found on your system. 4. COMPILATION In case you chose to not use wineinstall, run the following commands to build Wine: ./configure make depend make This will build the program "wine" and numerous support libraries/binaries. The program "wine" will load and run Windows executables. The library "libwine" ("Winelib") can be used to compile and link Windows source code under Unix. To see compile configuration options, do ./configure --help. To upgrade to a new release by using a patch file, first cd to the top-level directory of the release (the one containing this README file). Then do a "make clean", and patch the release with: bunzip2 -c patch-file | patch -p1 where "patch-file" is the name of the patch file (something like wine-0.9.x.diff.bz2). You can then re-run "./configure", and then run "make depend && make". 5. SETUP Once Wine has been built correctly, you can do "make install"; this will install the wine executable, the Wine man page, and a few other needed files. Don't forget to uninstall any conflicting previous Wine installation first. Try either "dpkg -r wine" or "rpm -e wine" or "make uninstall" before installing. See the Support area at http://www.winehq.org/ for configuration hints. In case of library loading errors (e.g. "Error while loading shared libraries: libntdll.so"), make sure to add the library path to /etc/ld.so.conf and run ldconfig as root. 6. RUNNING PROGRAMS When invoking Wine, you may specify the entire path to the executable, or a filename only. For example: to run Solitaire: wine sol (using the search Path as specified in wine sol.exe the config file to locate the file) wine c:\\windows\\sol.exe (using DOS filename syntax) wine /usr/windows/sol.exe (using Unix filename syntax) wine sol.exe /parameter1 -parameter2 parameter3 (calling program with parameters) Wine is not yet complete, so several programs may crash. In that crash you will be dropped into the debugger so that you can investigate and fix the problem. For more information on how to do this, please check the debugging section of the Wine Developer's Guide. 7. GETTING MORE INFORMATION WWW: A great deal of information about Wine is available from WineHQ at http://www.winehq.org/ : various Wine Guides, application database, bug tracking. This is probably the best starting point. FAQ: The Wine FAQ is located at http://www.winehq.org/FAQ Usenet: You can discuss Wine-related issues and get help on comp.emulators.ms-windows.wine. Bugs: Report bugs to Wine Bugzilla at http://bugs.winehq.org Please search the bugzilla database to check whether your problem is already found before posting a bug report. You can also post bug reports to comp.emulators.ms-windows.wine. IRC: Online help is available at channel #WineHQ on irc.freenode.net. GIT: The current Wine development tree is available through GIT. Go to http://www.winehq.org/site/git for more information. Mailing lists: There are several mailing lists for Wine users and developers; see http://www.winehq.org/forums for more information. Wiki: The Wine Wiki is located at http://wiki.winehq.org If you add something, or fix a bug, please send a patch (in 'diff -u' format) to wine-patches@winehq.org list for inclusion in the next release. -- Alexandre Julliard julliard@winehq.org