http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=19816
--- Comment #7 from Bamm Gabriana bammzilla@astronomy.com.ph 2009-08-23 14:41:43 --- As the requestor of this enhancement, please let me explain. So many installers nowadays no longer include these DLLs because they assume they are on the system. As a user, I believe that ideally, running the installer in Wine should allow the user the immediately run the program. I think requiring the user to know that they need to use winetricks after installing their app adds to the reputation of Wine being only for advance users.
I believe that winetricks should always and only remain a hack for things that do not work at the moment. It shouldn't be considered a solution for end users. We shouldn't even require end users to know which runtime is needed by their apps, especially since it works out of the box in XP (which by default is what Wine tells the installers it is, btw).
Lastly (and this may be just me), I don't like having the real msvbvm50/60 on my system. I just want my apps. If I can have free alternatives then better.
If I had the programming skills for this I would probably scratch my itch. But having none, I do the next best thing and file a request in the remote hope that someone has a similar itch with necessary skills. I am by no means requiring those who are already working on other parts (and doing a good job too!) to work on my request instead of what they believe to be important to them.
I know that Wine has many more important bugs that need to be worked on, but that shouldn't be reason to prevent what I perceive to be a valid request. After all, it took me 3 years to finally decide to file this bug, because I respect the more important things that needed to be done.