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 There are two types of dependencies: hard and soft dependencies.
50 A hard dependency must be available at runtime for Wine to function,
51 if compiled into the code. Soft dependencies on the other hand
52 will degrade gracefully at runtime if unavailable on the runtime system.
53 Ideally, we should eliminate all hard dependencies in favour of
56 To enable a soft dependency, it must be available at compile time.
57 As a packager, please do your best to make sure that as many soft
58 dependencies are available during compilation. Failing to have a
59 soft dependency available means that users cannot benefit
60 from a Wine capability.
62 Here is a list of the soft dependencies. We suggest packagers
63 install each and every last of those before building the package.
64 These libraries are not dependencies in the RPM sense. In DEB packages,
65 they should appear as "Suggests" or "Recommends", as the case may be.
66 * FreeType: http://www.freetype.org
67 This library is used for direct rendering of fonts. It provides
68 better support of fonts than using the X11 fonts engine. It is
69 only needed for the X11 back end engine. Used from GDI.
71 * Alsa: "http://sourceforge.net/projects/alsa (Linux only)
72 This library gives sound support to the Windows environment.
74 * JACK: http://jackit.sourceforge.net
75 Similar to Alsa, it allow Wine to use the JACK audio server.
77 * CUPS: http://www.cups.org
78 This library allows Windows to see CUPS defined printers.
81 This is used for both OpenGL and Direct3D (and some other
82 DirectX functions as well) support in Wine. There are many many
83 libraries for providing this functionality. It is enough for one
84 of them to be available when compiling Wine. Wine can work with
85 any other library during runtime.
86 If no library is available, packagers are encouraged to compile
87 Wine with Mesa3D (http://www.mesa3d.org), which requires no
88 hardware support to install.
93 An installation from a Wine package should:
94 * Install quickly and simply:
95 The initial installation should require no user input. An
96 'rpm -i wine.rpm' or 'apt-get install wine'
97 should suffice for initial installation.
99 * Work quickly and simply:
100 The user should be able to launch Solitaire
101 within minutes of downloading the Wine package.
103 * Comply with Filesystem Hierarchy Standard
104 A Wine installation should, as much as possible, comply
105 with the FHS standard (http://www.pathname.com/fhs/).
107 * Preserve flexibility
108 None of the flexibility built into Wine should
109 be hidden from the end user.
112 Come as preconfigured as possible, so the user does
113 not need to change any configuration files.
116 Use only as much diskspace as needed per user.
118 * Reduce support requirements.
119 A packaged version of Wine should be sufficiently easy to use and
120 have quick and easy access to FAQs and documentation such that
121 requests to the newsgroup and development group go down.
122 Further, it should be easy for users to capture good bug reports.
127 Successfully installing Wine requires:
128 * Much thought and work from the packager (1x)
130 * A configuration file
131 Wine will not run without a configuration file. Wine provides a
132 a sample config file and it can be found in documentation/samples.
133 Some packagers may attempt to provide (or dynamically generate) a
134 default configuration file. Some packagers may wish to rely on
135 winesetup to generate the configuration file.
137 * A writeable C drive
138 A writeable C:\ directory structure on a per-user basis.
139 Applications do dump .ini file into C:\WINDOWS, installer
140 dump .exe/.dll/etc. files into C:\WINDOWS or C:\Program Files.
142 * An initial set of registry entries.
143 The current Wine standard is to use the regedit tool against
144 the 'winedefault.reg' file to generate a default registry.
145 The current preferred method of configuring/installing
146 Wine is to run /toos/wineinstall. There are several other
147 choices that could be made; registries can be imported from
148 a Windows partition. At this time, Wine does not completely
149 support a complex multi-user installation ala Windows NT,
150 but it could fairly readily.
153 Some special .dll and .exe files in the C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM
154 directory, since applications directly check for their presence.
160 - notepad : The windows Notepad replacement.
161 - progman : A Program Manager replacement.
162 - regedit : A command-line tool to edit your registry or for
163 important a windows registry to Wine.
164 - regsvr32 : A program to register/unregister .DLL's and .OCX files.
165 Only works on those dlls that can self-register.
166 - uninstaller: A program to uninstall installed Windows programs.
167 Like the Add/Remove Program in the windows control panel.
168 - wcmd : Wine's command line interpreter, a cmd.exe replacement.
169 - widl : Wine IDL compiler compiles (MS-RPC and DCOM) Interface
170 Definition Language files.
171 - wine : The main Wine executable. This program will load a Windows
172 binary and run it, relying upon the Wine shared object libraries.
173 - wineboot : This program is executed on startup of the first wine
174 process of a particular user.wineboot won't automatically run
175 when needed. Currently you have to manually run it after you
177 - winebuild : Winebuild is a tool used for building Winelib applications
178 (and by Wine itself) to allow a developer to compile a .spec file
180 - wineclipserv : The Wine Clipboard Server is a standalone XLib application
181 whose purpose is to manage the X selection when Wine exits.
182 - wineconsole : Render the output of CUI programs.
183 - winedbg : A application making use of the debugging API to allow
184 debugging of Wine or Winelib applications as well as Wine itself
185 (kernel and all DLLs).
186 - winedump : Dumps the imports and exports of NE and PE files.
187 - winefile : A clone of the win3x filemanager.
188 - winegcc/wineg++: Wrappers for gcc/g++ respectively, to make them behave
189 as MinGW's gcc. Used for porting apps over to Winelib.
190 - winemaker : Winemaker is a perl script which is designed to help you
191 bootstrap the conversion of your Windows projects to Winelib.
192 - winemine : A clone of "Windows Minesweeper" a demo WineLib app.
193 - winepath : A tool for converting between Windows paths and Unix paths
194 - wineserver : The Wine server is the process that manages resources,
195 coordinates threads, and provides synchronization and interprocess
196 communication primitives to Wine processes.
197 - wineshelllink : This shell script can be called by Wine in order to
198 propagate Desktop icon and menu creation requests out to a
199 GNOME or KDE (or other Window Managers).
200 - winewrap : Takes care of linking winelib applications. Linking with
201 Winelib is a complex process, winewrap makes it simple.
202 - winhelp : A Windows Help replacement.
203 - wmc : Wine Message Compiler it allows Windows message files to be
204 compiled into a format usable by Wine.
205 - wrc : the Wine Resource Compiler. A clone of Microsoft's rc.
207 * Shared Object Library Files
208 To obtain a current list of DLLs, run:
210 it the root of the Wine _build_ tree, after a successful build.
213 To obtain a current list of man files that need to be installed, run:
215 it the root of the Wine _build_ tree, after you have run ./configure.
218 An up to date list of includes can be found in the include/Makefile.in file.
220 * Documentation files
221 After building the documentation with:
222 cd documentation; make html
223 install all the files from: wine-user/, wine-devel/ and winelib-user/.
226 Wine also generates and depends on a number of dynamic
227 files, including user configuration files and registry files.
229 At the time of this writing, there was not a clear
230 consensus of where these files should be located, and how
231 they should be handled. This section attempts
232 to explain the alternatives clearly.
235 This file is the user local Wine configuration file.
236 At the time of this writing, if this file exists,
237 then no other configuration file is loaded.
240 This is the global Wine configuration file. It is only used
241 if the user running Wine has no local configuration file.
242 Global wine configuration is currently not possible;
243 this might get reenabled at some time.
244 Some packagers feel that this file should not be supplied,
245 and that only a wine.conf.default should be given here.
246 Other packagers feel that this file should be the predominant
247 file used, and that users should only shift to a local
248 configuration file if they need to. An argument has been
249 made that the local configuration file should inherit the
250 global configuration file. At this time, Wine does not do this;
251 please refer to the WineHQ discussion archives for the debate
253 This debate is addressed more completely below, in the
254 'Packaging Strategy' section.
257 In order to replicate the Windows registry system,
258 Wine stores registry entries in a series of files.
260 For an excellent overview of this issue, read this
261 http://www.winehq.org/News/2000-25.html#FTR
262 Wine Weekly News feature.
264 The bottom line is that, at Wine server startup,
265 Wine loads all registry entries into memory
266 to create an in memory image of the registry.
267 The order of files which Wine uses to load
268 registry entries is extremely important,
269 as it affects what registry entries are
270 actually present. The order is roughly that
271 .dat files from a Windows partion are loaded,
272 then global registry settings from ETCDIR,
273 and then finally local registry settings are
274 loaded from WINEPREFIX. As each set are loaded,
275 they can override the prior entries. Thus,
276 the local registry files take precedence.
278 Then, at exit (or at periodic intervals),
279 Wine will write either all registry entries
280 (or, with the default setting) changed
281 registry entries to files in the WINEPREFIX.
283 - WINEPREFIX/system.reg
284 This file contains the user's local copy of the
285 HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE registry hive. In general use, it will
286 contain only changes made to the default registry values.
288 - WINEPREFIX/user.reg
289 This file contains the user's local copy of the
290 HKEY_CURRENT_MACHINE registry hive. In general use, it will
291 contain only changes made to the default registry values.
293 - WINEPREFIX/userdef.reg
294 This file contains the user's local copy of the
295 HKEY_USERS\.Default registry hive. In general use, it will
296 contain only changes made to the default registry values.
298 - WINEPREFIX/cachedmetrics.[display]
299 This file contains font metrics for the given X display.
300 Generally, this cache is generated once at Wine start time.
301 cachedmetrics can be generated if absent.
302 You should note this can take a long time.
304 - ETCDIR/wine.systemreg
305 This file contains the global values for HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.
306 The values in this file can be overridden by the user's
307 local settings. The location of this directory is hardcoded
308 within wine, generally to /etc.
310 - ETCDIR/wine.userreg
311 This file contains the global values for HKEY_USERS.
312 The values in this file can be overridden by the user's
313 local settings. This file is likely to be deprecated in
314 favor of a global wine.userdef.reg that will only contain
317 * Important Files from a Windows Partition
318 Wine has the ability to use files from an installation of the
319 actual Microsoft Windows operating system. Generally these
320 files are loaded on a VFAT partition that is mounted under Linux.
322 This is probably the most important configuration detail.
323 The use of Windows registry and DLL files dramatically alters the
324 behaviour of Wine. If nothing else, pacakager have to make this
325 distinction clear to the end user, so that they can intelligently
326 choose their configuration.
328 - WINDOWSDIR/system32/system.dat
329 - WINDOWSDIR/system32/user.dat
332 * Windows Dynamic Link Libraries (WINDOWSDIR/system32/*.dll)
333 Wine has the ability to use the actual Windows DLL files
334 when running an application. An end user can configure
335 Wine so that Wine uses some or all of these DLL files
336 when running a given application.
341 There has recently been a lot of discussion on the Wine
342 development mailing list about the best way to build Wine packages.
344 There was a lot of discussion, and several diverging points of view.
345 This section of the document attempts to present the areas of common
346 agreement, and also to present the different approaches advocated on
349 * Distribution of Wine into packages
350 The most basic question to ask is given the Wine CVS tree,
351 what physical files are you, the packager, going to produce?
352 Are you going to produce only a wine.rpm (as Marcus has done),
353 or are you going to produce 6 Debian files (libwine, libwine-dev,
354 wine, wine-doc, wine-utils and winesetuptk) as Ove has done?
355 At this point, common practice is to adopt to the conventions
356 of the targeted distribution.
358 * Where to install files
359 This question is not really contested. It will vary
360 by distribution, and is really up to the packager.
361 As a guideline, the current 'make install' process
362 seems to behave such that if we pick a single PREFIX then:
363 - binary files go into PREFIX/bin
364 - library files go into PREFIX/lib/wine
365 - include files go into PREFIX/include/wine
366 - man pages go into PREFIX/share/man
367 - documentation files go into PREFIX/share/doc/wine-VERSION
369 You might also want to use the wine wrapper script winelauncher
370 that can be found in tools/ directory, as it has several important
371 advantages over directly invoking the wine binary.
372 See the Executable Files section for details.
374 * The question of /opt/wine
375 The FHS 2.2 specification suggests that Wine as a package
376 should be installed to /opt/wine. None of the existing packages
377 follow this guideline (today; check again tomorrow).
379 * What files to create
380 After installing the static and shareable files, the next
381 question the packager needs to ask is how much dynamic
382 configuration will be done, and what configuration
383 files should be created.
384 There are several approaches to this:
385 - Rely completely on user file space - install nothing
386 This approach relies upon the new winesetup utility
387 and the new ability of Wine to launch winesetup if no
388 configuration file is found. The basic concept is
389 that no global configuration files are created at
390 install time. Instead, Wine configuration files are
391 created on the fly by the winesetup program when Wine
392 is invoked. Further, winesetup creates default
393 Windows directories and paths that are stored
394 completely in the user's WINEPREFIX. This approach
395 has the benefit of simplicity in that all Wine files
396 are either stored under /opt/wine or under ~/.wine.
397 Further, there is only ever one Wine configuration
398 file. This approach, however, adds another level of
399 complexity. It does not allow Wine to run Solitaire
400 'out of the box'; the user must run the configuration
401 program first. Further, winesetup requires Tcl/Tk, a
402 requirement not beloved by some. Additionally, this
403 approach closes the door on multi user configurations
404 and presumes a single user approach.
406 - Build a reasonable set of defaults for the global wine.conf,
407 facilitate creation of a user's local Wine configuration.
408 This approach, best shown by Marcus, causes the
409 installation process to auto scan the system,
410 and generate a global wine.conf file with best
411 guess defaults. The OpenLinux packages follow
413 The keys to this approach are always putting
414 an existing Windows partition into the
415 path, and being able to run Solitaire
416 right out of the box.
417 Another good thing that Marcus does is he
418 detects a first time installation and
419 does some clever things to improve the
420 user's Wine experience.
421 A flaw with this approach, however, is it doesn't
422 give the user an obvious way to choose not to
423 use a Windows partition.
425 - Build a reasonable set of defaults for the global wine.conf,
426 and ask the user if possible
427 This approach, demonstrated by Ove, causes the
428 installation process to auto scan the system,
429 and generate a global wine.conf file with best
430 guess defaults. Because Ove built a Debian
431 package, he was able to further query debconf and
432 get permission to ask the user some questions,
433 allowing the user to decide whether or not to
434 use a Windows partition.
439 This section discusses the implementation of a Red Hat 8.0 .spec file.
440 For a current .spec file, please refer to any one of the existing SRPMs.
442 1. Building the package
444 Wine is configured the usual way (depending on your build environment).
445 The PREFIX is chosen using your application placement policy
446 (/usr/, /usr/X11R6/, /opt/wine/, or similar). The configuration files
447 (wine.conf, wine.userreg, wine.systemreg) are targeted for /etc/wine/
448 (rationale: FHS 2.2, multiple readonly configuration files of a package).
450 Example (split this into %build and %install section for rpm:
453 CFLAGS=$RPM_OPT_FLAGS ./configure --prefix=/usr/X11R6 --sysconfdir=/etc/wine/ --enable-dll
456 make install prefix=$BR/usr/X11R6/ sysconfdir=$BR/etc/wine/
457 install -d $BR/etc/wine/
458 install -m 644 wine.ini $BR/etc/wine/wine.conf
460 # Put all our DLLs in a separate directory. (this works only if you have a buildroot)
461 install -d $BR/usr/X11R6/lib/wine
462 mv $BR/usr/X11R6/lib/lib* $BR/usr/X11R6/lib/wine/
464 # the clipboard server is started on demand.
465 install -m 755 dlls/x11drv/wineclipsrv $BR/usr/X11R6/bin/
467 # The Wine server is needed.
468 install -m 755 server/wineserver $BR/usr/X11R6/bin/
470 Here we unfortunately do need to create wineuser.reg and winesystem.reg
471 from the Wine distributed winedefault.reg. This can be done using regedit
472 once for one example user and then reusing his WINEPREFIX/user.reg and
473 WINEPREFIX/system.reg files.
474 FIXME: this needs to be done better.
476 install -m 644 wine.sytemreg $BR/etc/wine/
477 install -m 644 wine.userreg $BR/etc/wine/
479 There are now a lot of libraries generated by the build process, so a
480 separate library directory should be used.
482 install -d 755 $BR/usr/X11R6/lib/
485 You will need to package the files:
487 $prefix/bin/wine, $prefix/bin/dosmod, $prefix/lib/wine/*
488 $prefix/man/man1/wine.1, $prefix/include/wine/*,
489 $prefix/bin/wineserver, $prefix/bin/wineclipsrv
492 %doc ... choose from the toplevel directory and documentation/
494 The post-install script:
496 if ! grep /usr/X11R6/lib/wine /etc/ld.so.conf >/dev/null; then
497 echo "/usr/X11R6/lib/wine" >> /etc/ld.so.conf
501 The post-uninstall script:
503 if [ "$1" = 0 ]; then
504 perl -ni -e 'print unless m:/usr/X11R6/lib/wine:;' /etc/ld.so.conf
508 2. Creating a good default configuration file.
510 For the rationales of needing as less input from the user as possible arises
511 the need for a very good configuration file. The one supplied with Wine is
512 currently lacking. We need:
515 - A for the floppy. Specify your distribution's default floppy mountpoint.
517 - C for the C:\ directory. Here we use the user's home directory, for most
518 applications do see C:\ as root-writeable directory of every windows
519 installation and this basically is it in the UNIX-user context.
520 Don't forget to identify environment variables as DOS ones (ie, surrounded by '%').
522 - R for the CD-Rom drive. Specify your distribution's default CD-ROM mountpoint.
524 - T for temporary storage. We do use /tmp/ (rationale: between process
525 temporary data belongs to /tmp/ , FHS 2.0)
527 - W for the original Windows installation. This drive points to the
528 WINDOWSDIR subdirectory of the original windows installation.
529 This avoids problems with renamed WINDOWSDIR directories (as for
530 instance lose95, win or sys\win95). During compile/package/install
531 we leave this to be / , it has to be configured after the package install.
532 - Z for the UNIX Root directory. This avoids any roblems with
533 "could not find drive for current directory" users occasionally complain
534 about in the newsgroup and the irc channel. It also makes the whole
535 directory structure browseable. The type of Z should be network,
536 so applications expect it to be readonly.
540 Windows=c:\windows\ (the windows/ subdirectory in the user's
542 System=c:\windows\system\ (the windows/system subdirectory in the user's
544 Path=c:\windows;c:\windows\system;c:\windows\system32;w:\;w:\system;w:\system32;
545 ; Using this trick we have in fact two windows installations in one, we
546 ; get the stuff from the readonly installation and can write to our own.
547 Temp=t:\ (the TEMP directory)
550 WineLook=win95 (just the coolest look ;)
552 * Possibly modify the [spooler], [serialports] and [parallelports] sections.
553 FIXME: possibly more, including printer stuff.
555 Add this prepared configuration file to the package.
557 3. Installing Wine for the system administrator
559 Install the package using the usual packager 'rpm -i wine.rpm'.
560 You may edit /etc/wine/wine.conf , [Drive W], to point to a
561 possible Windows installation right after the install. That's it.
563 Note that on Linux you should somehow try to add the unhide mount optioni
564 (see 'man mount') to the CD-ROM entry in /etc/fstab during package install,
565 as several stupid Windows programs mark some setup (!) files as hidden
566 (ISO9660) on CD-ROMs, which will greatly confuse users as they won't find
567 their setup files on the CD-ROMs as they were used on Windows systems when
568 unhide is not set ;-\ And of course the setup program will complain
569 that setup.ins or some other mess is missing... If you choose to do so,
570 then please make this change verbose to the admin.
572 Also make sure that the kernel you use includes the Joliet CD-ROM support,
573 for the very same reasons as given above (no long filenames due to missing
574 Joliet, files not found).
576 4. Installing Wine for the user
578 The user will need to run a setup script before the first invocation of Wine.
580 * Copy /etc/wine/wine.conf for user modification.
581 * Allow specification of the original windows installation to use
582 (which modifies the copied wine.conf file).
583 * Create the windows directory structure (c:\windows, c:\windows\system,
584 c:\windows\Start Menu\Programs, c:\Program Files, c:\Desktop, etc.)
585 * Symlink all .dll and .exe files from the original windows installation
586 to the windows directory. Why? Some programs reference
587 "%windowsdir%/file.dll" or "%systemdir%/file.dll" directly and fail
588 if they are not present. This will give a huge number of symlinks, yes.
589 However, if an installer later overwrites one of those files, it will
590 overwrite the symlink (so that the file now lies in the windows/
591 subdirectory). FIXME: Not sure this is needed for all files.
592 * On later invocation the script might want to compare regular files in
593 the user's windows directories and in the global windows directories
594 and replace same files by symlinks (to avoid diskspace problems).
599 Written in 1999 by Marcus Meissner <marcus@jet.franken.de>
600 Updated in 2000 by Jeremy White <jwhite@codeweavers.com>
601 Updated in 2002 by Andreas Mohr <andi@rhlx01.fht-esslingen.de>
602 Updated in 2003 by Tom Wickline <twickline2@triad.rr.com>
603 Updated in 2003 by Dimitrie O. Paun <dpaun@rogers.com>