http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=19182
--- Comment #69 from Damjan Jovanovic damjan.jov@gmail.com --- (In reply to comment #67)
IMO the way to fix this is to follow the unix philosophy: do one thing and do it well. wine does one thing: provide the windows API. it should not do another thing: mess around with the file associations in the linux desktop.
IMO Winelib provides the Windows API, Wine is much more than that.
instead of adding file associations directly wine should provide an interface, something like a socket. when a windows program want to change a file association wine will publish this on the socket. a client can then listen to the socket and react to the messages however it sees fit.
this way distributions like ubuntu can set up a listener which will add any and all file associations from windows programs to their desktop, while people who do not want windows programs from messing around in their linux desktop can just ignore the socket. it is even possible to write a listener which will ask the user first before adding the file association.
That "listener" would need to call the Windows API, read/write the registry, and do things like extract icons embedded in EXE/DLL files - 16, 32 and 64 bit versions of those. There's a reason winemenubuilder runs inside Wine.