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 * WINDOWSDIR: is an important concept to Wine. This directory specifies
32 what directory corresponds to the root Windows directory
33 (e.g. C:\WINDOWS). This directory is specified by the user, in
34 their registry settings. Generally speaking, this directory
35 is either set to point at an empty directory, or it is set to point
36 at a Windows partition that has been mounted through the vfat driver.
37 NOTE: It is extremely important that the packager understand the
38 importance of WINDOWSDIR and convey this information and
39 choice to the end user.
44 There are two types of dependencies: hard and soft dependencies.
46 A hard dependency must be available at runtime for Wine to function,
47 if compiled into the code. Soft dependencies on the other hand
48 will degrade gracefully at runtime if unavailable on the runtime system.
49 Ideally, we should eliminate all hard dependencies in favor of
52 To enable a soft dependency, it must be available at compile time.
53 As a packager, please do your best to make sure that as many soft
54 dependencies are available during compilation. Failing to have a
55 soft dependency available means that users cannot benefit
56 from a Wine capability.
58 Here is a list of the soft dependencies. We suggest packagers
59 install each and every last of those before building the package.
60 These libraries are not dependencies in the RPM sense. In DEB packages,
61 they should appear as "Suggests" or "Recommends", as the case may be.
62 * FreeType: http://www.freetype.org
63 This library is used for direct rendering of fonts. It provides
64 better support of fonts than using the X11 fonts engine. It is
65 only needed for the X11 back end engine. Used from GDI.
68 Used to find TrueType fonts for rendering with freetype. Used by
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. Used
79 by WINEPS and WINSPOOL.
82 This is used for both OpenGL and Direct3D (and some other
83 DirectX functions as well) support in Wine. There are many many
84 libraries for providing this functionality. It is enough for one
85 of them to be available when compiling Wine. Wine can work with
86 any other library during runtime.
87 If no library is available, packagers are encouraged to compile
88 Wine with Mesa3D (http://www.mesa3d.org), which requires no
89 hardware support to install.
91 * LittleCMS: http://www.littlecms.com
92 This library is used to implement MSCMS (Color Management System)
93 which is needed by an increasing number of graphics applications.
96 This library is used to load JPEG files within OLE automation.
99 One of these two libraries is used to load GIF files within OLE
103 Used for bidirectional character output. Linked statically, used
107 Used for basic scanner support in our TWAIN32 library.
110 Used for some cryptographic support in ADVAPI32.
112 * Xrandr, Xrender, Xi, Xext
113 X11 extension libraries used by the x11drv.
114 Xrandr - resolution switching
115 Xrender - client side font rendering
116 Xi - X Input handling (for asian input methods mostly)
122 An installation from a Wine package should:
123 * Install quickly and simply:
124 The initial installation should require no user input. An
125 'rpm -i wine.rpm' or 'apt-get install wine'
126 should suffice for initial installation.
128 * Work quickly and simply:
129 The user should be able to launch Solitaire within seconds
130 of downloading the Wine package.
132 * Comply with File system Hierarchy Standard
133 A Wine installation should, as much as possible, comply
134 with the FHS standard (http://www.pathname.com/fhs/).
136 * Preserve flexibility
137 None of the flexibility built into Wine should
138 be hidden from the end user.
141 Come as preconfigured as possible, so the user does
142 not need to change any configuration files.
145 Use only as much disk space as needed per user.
147 * Reduce support requirements.
148 A packaged version of Wine should be sufficiently easy to use and
149 have quick and easy access to FAQs and documentation such that
150 requests to the newsgroup and development group go down.
151 Further, it should be easy for users to capture good bug reports.
156 Successfully installing Wine requires:
158 * Install of the .rpm or .deb package.
160 * No longer: Preparing a fake windows setup.
162 If WINEPREFIX is not present, wine will generate a setup
163 by itself by calling wineprefixcreate.
165 This will load all default registry entries, and register dlls
166 where necessary. A special "wine.inf" file is provided with
167 the WINE sources and installed to /usr/share/wine/.
173 - notepad : The windows Notepad replacement.
174 - progman : A Program Manager replacement.
175 - regedit : A graphical tool to edit your registry or for
176 importing a windows registry to Wine.
177 - regsvr32 : A program to register/unregister .DLL and .OCX files.
178 Only works on those dlls that can self-register.
179 - taskmgr : A clone of the windows taskmgr, used for debugging and
180 managing running Windows and Winlib processes.
181 - uninstaller: A program to uninstall installed Windows programs.
182 Like the Add/Remove Program in the windows control panel.
183 - wcmd : Wine's command line interpreter, a cmd.exe replacement.
184 - widl : Wine IDL compiler compiles (MS-RPC and DCOM) Interface
185 Definition Language files.
186 - wine : The main Wine executable. This program will load a Windows
187 binary and run it, relying upon the Wine shared object libraries.
188 - wineboot : This program is executed on startup of the first wine
189 process of a particular user.wineboot won't automatically run
190 when needed. Currently you have to manually run it after you
192 - winebuild : Winebuild is a tool used for building Winelib applications
193 (and by Wine itself) to allow a developer to compile a .spec file
195 - wineconsole : Render the output of CUI programs.
196 - winedbg : A application making use of the debugging API to allow
197 debugging of Wine or Winelib applications as well as Wine itself
198 (kernel and all DLLs).
199 - winedump : Dumps the imports and exports of NE and PE files.
200 - winefile : A clone of the win3x file manager.
201 - winegcc/wineg++: Wrappers for gcc/g++ respectively, to make them behave
202 as MinGW's gcc. Used for porting apps over to Winelib.
203 - winemaker : Winemaker is a perl script which is designed to help you
204 bootstrap the conversion of your Windows projects to Winelib.
205 - winemine : A clone of "Windows Minesweeper" a demo WineLib app.
206 - winepath : A tool for converting between Windows paths and Unix paths
207 - wineserver : The Wine server is the process that manages resources,
208 coordinates threads, and provides synchronization and interprocess
209 communication primitives to Wine processes.
210 - wineshelllink : This shell script can be called by Wine in order to
211 propagate Desktop icon and menu creation requests out to a
212 GNOME or KDE (or other Window Managers).
213 - winewrap : Takes care of linking winelib applications. Linking with
214 Winelib is a complex process, winewrap makes it simple.
215 - winhelp : A Windows Help replacement.
216 - wmc : Wine Message Compiler it allows Windows message files to be
217 compiled into a format usable by Wine.
218 - wrc : the Wine Resource Compiler. A clone of Microsoft's rc.
220 * Shared Object Library Files
221 To obtain a current list of DLLs, run:
223 it the root of the Wine _build_ tree, after a successful build.
226 To obtain a current list of man files that need to be installed, run:
228 it the root of the Wine _build_ tree, after you have run ./configure.
231 An up to date list of includes can be found in the include/Makefile.in
234 * Documentation files
235 After building the documentation with:
236 cd documentation; make html
237 install all the files from: wine-user/, wine-devel/ and winelib-user/.
240 Wine also generates and depends on a number of dynamic
241 files, including user configuration files and registry files.
243 At the time of this writing, there was not a clear
244 consensus of where these files should be located, and how
245 they should be handled. This section attempts
246 to explain the alternatives clearly.
249 - PREFIX/share/wine.inf
251 This is the global Wine setup information file
252 in the format of a MS Installer .INF file.
255 In order to replicate the Windows registry system,
256 Wine stores registry entries in a series of files.
258 For an excellent overview of this issue, read this
259 http://www.winehq.org/News/2000-25.html#FTR
260 Wine Weekly News feature.
262 The bottom line is that, at Wine server startup,
263 Wine loads all registry entries into memory
264 to create an in memory image of the registry.
265 The order of files which Wine uses to load
266 registry entries is extremely important,
267 as it affects what registry entries are
268 actually present. The order is roughly that
269 .dat files from a Windows partition are loaded,
270 and then finally local registry settings are
271 loaded from WINEPREFIX. As each set are loaded,
272 they can override the prior entries. Thus,
273 the local registry files take precedence.
275 Then, at exit (or at periodic intervals),
276 Wine will write either all registry entries
277 (or, with the default setting) changed
278 registry entries to files in the WINEPREFIX.
280 - WINEPREFIX/system.reg
281 This file contains the user's local copy of the
282 HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE registry hive. In general use, it will
283 contain only changes made to the default registry values.
285 - WINEPREFIX/user.reg
286 This file contains the user's local copy of the
287 HKEY_CURRENT_MACHINE registry hive. In general use, it will
288 contain only changes made to the default registry values.
290 - WINEPREFIX/userdef.reg
291 This file contains the user's local copy of the
292 HKEY_USERS\.Default registry hive. In general use, it will
293 contain only changes made to the default registry values.
295 - WINEPREFIX/cachedmetrics.[display]
296 This file contains font metrics for the given X display.
297 Generally, this cache is generated once at Wine start time.
298 cachedmetrics can be generated if absent.
299 You should note this can take a long time.
301 * Important Files from a Windows Partition
302 Wine has the ability to use files from an installation of the
303 actual Microsoft Windows operating system. Generally these
304 files are loaded on a VFAT partition that is mounted under Linux.
306 This is probably the most important configuration detail.
307 The use of Windows registry and DLL files dramatically alters the
308 behavior of Wine. If nothing else, packagers have to make this
309 distinction clear to the end user, so that they can intelligently
310 choose their configuration.
312 - WINDOWSDIR/system32/system.dat
313 - WINDOWSDIR/system32/user.dat
316 * Windows Dynamic Link Libraries (WINDOWSDIR/system32/*.dll)
317 Wine has the ability to use the actual Windows DLL files
318 when running an application. An end user can configure
319 Wine so that Wine uses some or all of these DLL files
320 when running a given application.
325 There has recently been a lot of discussion on the Wine development
326 mailing list about the best way to build Wine packages.
328 There was a lot of discussion, and several diverging points of view.
329 This section of the document attempts to present the areas of common
330 agreement, and also to present the different approaches advocated on
333 * Distribution of Wine into packages
334 The most basic question to ask is given the Wine CVS tree,
335 what physical files are you, the packager, going to produce?
336 Are you going to produce only a wine.rpm, or are you going to
337 produce 6 Debian files (libwine, libwine-dev, wine, wine-doc,
338 wine-utils and winesetuptk) as Ove has done?
339 At this point, common practice is to adopt to the conventions
340 of the targeted distribution.
342 Also, experience shows that you should not create a huge set
343 of packages, since later upgrades and obsoleting will be
346 * Where to install files
347 This question is not really contested. It will vary
348 by distribution, and is really up to the packager.
349 As a guideline, the current 'make install' process
350 seems to behave such that if we pick a single PREFIX then:
351 - binary files go into PREFIX/bin
352 - library files go into PREFIX/lib/wine
353 - include files go into PREFIX/include/wine
354 - man pages go into PREFIX/share/man
355 - documentation files go into PREFIX/share/doc/wine-VERSION
357 You might also want to use the wine wrapper script winelauncher
358 that can be found in tools/ directory, as it has several important
359 advantages over directly invoking the wine binary.
360 See the Executable Files section for details.
362 * The question of /opt/wine
363 The FHS 2.2 specification suggests that Wine as a package
364 should be installed to /opt/wine. None of the existing packages
365 follow this guideline (today; check again tomorrow).
367 (Since most are upgrades of the distro packages, this is still
368 on the safe side I think - Marcus Meissner)
370 * What files to create
371 After installing the static and shareable files, the next
372 question the packager needs to ask is how much dynamic
373 configuration will be done, and what configuration
374 files should be created.
376 The best current approach to this is:
377 - Leave it alone and make a "wineprefixcreate" call available
378 to the user via a menu item or similar.
380 - Setup a fake windows setup automatically.
382 This is done by simply calling wineprefixcreate,
383 which will setup a fake windows root for the user.
385 If no arguments are passed, defaults will be
386 assumed for WINEPREFIX (~/.wine) and similar
389 After this, WINE is immediately usable by the
392 - Others might be possible.
397 This section discusses the implementation of a Red Hat 8.0 .spec file.
398 For a current .spec file, please refer to any one of the existing SRPMs.
400 1. Building the package
402 Wine is configured the usual way (depending on your build environment).
403 The PREFIX is chosen using your application placement policy
404 (/usr/, /usr/X11R6/, /opt/wine/, or similar). The configuration files
405 (wine.userreg, wine.systemreg) are targeted for /etc/wine/
406 (rationale: FHS 2.2, multiple read only configuration files of a package).
408 Example (split this into %build and %install section for rpm:
411 CFLAGS="$RPM_OPT_FLAGS" ./configure --prefix=/usr/X11R6 --sysconfdir=/etc/wine/ --enable-dll
414 make install prefix=$BR/usr/X11R6/ sysconfdir=$BR/etc/wine/
416 You will need to package the files:
421 $prefix/share/wine/wine.inf
423 $prefix/man/man1/wine.1
424 $prefix/include/wine/*
435 %doc ... choose from the top level directory and documentation/
438 2. Installing Wine for the system administrator
440 Install the package using the usual packager 'rpm -i wine.rpm'.
442 Adapting the $prefix/share/wine/wine.inf file used by wineprefixcreate is not
445 Note that on Linux you should somehow try to add the unhide mount option
446 (see 'man mount') to the CD-ROM entry in /etc/fstab during package install,
447 as several stupid Windows programs mark some setup (!) files as hidden
448 (ISO9660) on CD-ROMs, which will greatly confuse users as they won't find
449 their setup files on the CD-ROMs as they were used on Windows systems when
450 unhide is not set ;-\ And of course the setup program will complain
451 that setup.ins or some other mess is missing... If you choose to do so,
452 then please make this change verbose to the admin.
454 Also make sure that the kernel you use includes the Joliet CD-ROM support,
455 for the very same reasons as given above (no long filenames due to missing
456 Joliet, files not found).
458 3. Installing Wine for the user
460 If no standard wine prefix was setup, the first call to wine will
461 create one for the user.
463 So the user can just click on any setup.exe file and it will work
469 Written in 1999 by Marcus Meissner <marcus@jet.franken.de>
470 Updated in 2000 by Jeremy White <jwhite@codeweavers.com>
471 Updated in 2002 by Andreas Mohr <andi@rhlx01.fht-esslingen.de>
472 Updated in 2003 by Tom Wickline <twickline2@triad.rr.com>
473 Updated in 2003 by Dimitrie O. Paun <dpaun@rogers.com>
474 Updated in 2004,2005 by Marcus Meissner <marcus@jet.franken.de>