[Bug 15202] New: provide support for raw text editing of registry files

http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15202

Summary: provide support for raw text editing of registry files
           Product: Wine
           Version: 1.1.4
          Platform: PC
        OS/Version: Linux
            Status: UNCONFIRMED
          Severity: enhancement
          Priority: P3
         Component: -unknown
        AssignedTo: [e-mail]
        ReportedBy: [e-mail]

Well, wine lives in linux environment so it is quite natural if registry files
(wine files) would be editable in unix manner -- grep, diff, patch, sed, etc.
Unix advantage (one of many) was and is batch text processing. Adding in the
middle special GUI tool just for editing stops any automatic processing.
Besides either you underpower your own program (regedit) comparing to existing
unix tools or reinvent wheel again.

So, if registry files have to be written in utf8, non-utf, raw unicode, well,
in short it does not matter really -- the wish is, please establish any
encoding necessary for raw text editing, so common-sense operations like
(example) removing entire lines till empty line would be guaranteed to work.

[Bug 15202] provide support for raw text editing of registry files

http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15202

Arkadiusz Piekarz  changed:

What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                 CC|                            |[e-mail]

--- Comment #1 from Arkadiusz Piekarz   2008-09-09 13:15:09 ---
Have you seen system.reg and user.reg in your ~/.wine directory?

[Bug 15202] provide support for raw text editing of registry files

http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15202

Vitaliy Margolen  changed:

What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
             Status|UNCONFIRMED                 |RESOLVED
         Resolution|                            |WONTFIX

--- Comment #2 from Vitaliy Margolen   2008-09-09 13:31:45 ---
They are internal file format. You don't touch them. If you try to edit that
you do that on your own risk.

This is won't fix.

[Bug 15202] provide support for raw text editing of registry files

http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15202

Vitaliy Margolen  changed:

What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
             Status|RESOLVED                    |CLOSED

--- Comment #3 from Vitaliy Margolen   2008-09-09 13:32:38 ---
Wine had config file and it was all migrated into registry. Time has proven
this to be correct decision.

[Bug 15202] provide support for raw text editing of registry files

http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15202

--- Comment #4 from Vitaliy Margolen   2008-09-09 13:33:30 ---
If you really have to edit something in the "unix manner" - script operations
with regedit.

[Bug 15202] provide support for raw text editing of registry files

http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15202

--- Comment #5 from Maciej Pilichowski   2008-09-09 15:11:13 ---
Arkadiusz,

I saw them. What's the point?

Vitaliy,

I beg to differ about time proving anything -- raw text files are also proven
by time they work great, while registry idea taken from Windows is ekhem, not
so great. And the idea, and running time is much longer than registry files.
  (Even XML files would be better because there are variety of tools to manage
XML, while for .reg files is one guaranteed tool -- regedit).

About regedit script mode, thank you for the tip, I will look for some manual
-- I don't have any in unix sense on my system, regedit --help does not work,
there is not a word about scripting on regedit wiki page, maybe not too
"unixish", but I'll keep looking (just for clarification I am looking for
automatically applying diff between two registry files and then how to patch
them -- i.e. how to apply difference file to one of them).

[Bug 15202] provide support for raw text editing of registry files

http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15202

--- Comment #6 from Vitaliy Margolen   2008-09-09 15:42:44 ---
In case you forgotten - windows does use registry. Not config files. Not xml.

The only "text" format registry can be written to/read from  is ... .reg files.
You can do that with regedit to both export to/import from.

However it is not 1-to-1 mapping, as you loosing lots of information while
doing that (on windows, Wine doesn't have all that ... yet). Reg files don't
store access permissions and modification times.

The resolution stands - you can not edit registry as a text files. Not on
Windows and not on Wine (if you really so ignorant and can't look at ~/.wine
directory).

[Bug 15202] provide support for raw text editing of registry files

http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15202

--- Comment #7 from Maciej Pilichowski   2008-09-10 00:39:32 ---
Vitaliy, thank you for the answer. I would appreciate if you skip the irony and
personal remarks, it serves no purpose except for lowering manner of the
comments. Thank you.
> In case you forgotten - windows does use registry. Not config files. Not
> xml. The only "text" format registry can be written to/read from 
> is ... .reg files.

If the I/O is done directly (low level), true, if registry file is accessed via
higher-level API (and AFAIR this is done in Windows) the files could be
represented internally as anything -- raw text file, xml, sqlite db, as long as
they provide WriteKey, ReadKey or whatever the API is (I didn't program for
Windows for a long time, so excuse me for the lack of the correct names).

Ok, pity it is not text file, I don't agree with reasoning, but I don't
convince you, and vice versa. 
Thank you for great program anyway. Kind regards,

[Bug 15202] provide support for raw text editing of registry files

http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15202

--- Comment #8 from Arkadiusz Piekarz   2008-09-10 03:12:34 ---
I had no problem editing user.reg with Gedit. The changes were then displayable
in Winecfg. But maybe I'm missing the point of this discussion.

[Bug 15202] provide support for raw text editing of registry files

http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15202

--- Comment #9 from Maciej Pilichowski   2008-09-10 04:03:59 ---
Arkadiusz, I edited them with mcedit and after that everything was peachy :-)
Refer to FAQ however, that such editing is not guaranteed to work and you (and
I) do this on your own risk.

When building automatic snapshot/editor (for batch jobs) it is then too risky
to depend on something not guaranteed by design, and only that "till now it
works".

And any tool that edit it (except for regedit) is asking for trouble -- I
cannot for example use sed to reset some counters in registry (automatically)
because it is editing in raw text mode. And this is what this wish-report is
about.

[Bug 15202] provide support for raw text editing of registry files

http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15202

--- Comment #10 from Dmitry Timoshkov   2008-09-10 05:55:52 ---
(In reply to comment #9)
> Arkadiusz, I edited them with mcedit and after that everything was peachy :-)
> Refer to FAQ however, that such editing is not guaranteed to work and you (and
> I) do this on your own risk.

All you need is make sure that wineserver is not running in this $WINEPREFIX,
there is nothing dangerous or risky once you take care of that.

[Bug 15202] provide support for raw text editing of registry files

http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15202

--- Comment #11 from Maciej Pilichowski   2008-09-10 07:03:14 ---
Dmitry,

This information changes _a lot_ :-) Thank you! I wanted to
edit/copy/search/etc. when wine or wine app is not running. I want to write a
script to make daily snapshots with diff plus automatically reset some values.
  Thanks again.