Re: Submitting winetricks to winehq tree?

[Dan Kegel]

Carl-Daniel wrote:
> Sorry if this has been answered before, but is winetricks a newer
> version of winetools?

No.  Winetricks (http://www.kegel.com/wine/winetricks ) is a single
11KB shell script.  It's a tiny
command line tool that only knows how to install Microsoft
redistributable libraries (and fonts), and set a registry key or two.
For instance, if you're trying to install or run an application, but it fails
with "import_dll Library MSVBVM60.DLL not found", you can fix it with
  $ winetricks vbrun60
Or if you're trying to install an app, but it fails with "Sorry, this
application requires IE6", you can fix it without really installing IE6
by setting the right registry key.  Winetricks makes this easy; just do
  $ winetricks fakeie6
etc. etc.  Essentially, Winetricks just automates things one would
normally have to look up in the Wine wiki, and it does it in the
simplest possible way.

Winetools ( http://www.von-thadden.de/Joachim/WineTools/ )
can do some of that, but it's really a different beast.
It's a set of 150 or so files with a fancy GUI.  Each of the files
is a recipe for installing a particular Windows application.
It is aimed at people who just want to run
apps and not understand things.  It is bad because, instead
of working to improve Wine to make apps easy to install,
it papers over the problems.

And then there's Wine-Doors ( http://www.wine-doors.org ),
which is like Winetools with delusions of grandeur.
They seem to want to reinvent apt-get
for no particular reason, and as far as I can tell, they intend
to have a central server from which you can download copies
of e.g. Photoshop with it.  This doesn't seem legal, offhand, but
I can't find their mailing list archive to see if anyone has asked
them about this fine point.

IMHO both Winetools and Wine Doors are mostly harmful,
but they do have a real benefit for users.  Winetricks is a bit like
the non-harmful 1% of Winetools.  If we don't provide something
like Winetricks, more people might be driven to Winetools,
and it'd be nice to prevent that.
- Dan

Submitting winetricks to winehq tree?

[Steven Edwards]

On 3/14/07, Dan Kegel <dank(a)kegel.com> wrote:
> And then there's Wine-Doors ( http://www.wine-doors.org ),
> which is like Winetools with delusions of grandeur.
> They seem to want to reinvent apt-get
> for no particular reason, and as far as I can tell, they intend
> to have a central server from which you can download copies
> of e.g. Photoshop with it.  This doesn't seem legal, offhand, but
> I can't find their mailing list archive to see if anyone has asked
> them about this fine point.

I think the idea with the WineDoors deployment method is kind of like
what CrossOver does with rpm bottles and rpm deployment. By using RPM
or Alien to convert the bottles in to apt packages, an enterprise
customer can push out a preconfigured bottle to hundreds or thousands
of workstations using existing package management tools. Currently
Wine has no enterprise support for this except buying CrossOver. Of
course it seems WineDoors would still require the third party
application to be installed but at least it would be automated.

-- 
Steven Edwards

"There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and
that is an idea whose time has come." - Victor Hugo