https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=37779
--- Comment #8 from Anastasius Focht focht@gmx.net --- Hello Tom,
--- quote --- I think what Anastasius is implying is that .NET 4.5 does not install fully on 32 bit wine either. The winetricks install is subject to the same silent ignoring of .msu files. The real problem in both cases is that wine has no ability to install .msu files because no one has yet managed to reverse engineer what MS does with these files. So the issue is about .msu files, not about 64 bit wine.
Is this correct Anastasius? --- quote ---
Mostly yes :)
The 'winetricks' recipe for 32-bit .NET 4.5 basically "cheats" by pre-installing .NET 3.x and .NET 4.0 in the WINEPREFIX hence an earlier version of 'mscoree' will be present before the .NET 4.5 installer is run.
Hence comparing 32-bit 'winetricks dotnet45' vs. running .NET Framework 4.5 installer stand-alone is kind of pointless - regardless if it's 32-bit or 64-bit.
Technically even the 32-bit .NET Framework 4.5 'winetricks' based installation is kind of broken since the old 3.x/4.0 .NET bootstrapper which ought to be upgraded by the .MSU package is now mixed with newer parts of the CLR.
--- quote --- because no one has yet managed to reverse engineer what MS does with these files. --- quote ---
MSU files are not complex/hard to understand. In general it's not really worth the effort to add MSU support just for the few exceptions like this one.
Installation of most MSU packages provided by Windows Update API infrastructure will not work by design since they expect to replace/patch *original* MS components. Only full component replacements or Wine cheating with version resources might work (tricking the component version checks into success). In the end you might still end up with a broken/damaged WINEPREFIX.
Regards