Folks,
Here are the release notes for 7.0. Please review them and let me know if you spot anything incorrect or missing. The final 7.0 will be out shortly.
Many thanks to Esme, Henri, Nikolay, Jacek, Rémi and Zeb for their help with these release notes.
What's new in Wine 7.0 ======================
*** PE modules
- With a few exceptions, all modules can be built in PE format. The goal is to convert the remaining modules after 7.0.
- For PE modules with an associated Unix library, the interface between the PE part and the Unix part goes through a standard NT system call. This enables hiding the Unix code from Windows debuggers, and switching the thread register on platforms that require it.
- Builtin dlls are only loaded if there is a corresponding PE file on disk, either a real binary or a fake PE module. This ensures that the application always sees a valid PE file mapping. It can be disabled through the WINEBOOTSTRAPMODE environment variable, used at prefix creation time.
*** WoW64
- The 64-bit Windows-on-Windows (WoW64) architecture is implemented, and supports running a 32-bit Windows application inside a 64-bit Unix host process, using thunks to map 32-bit NT system calls to the 64-bit NTDLL.
- WoW64 thunks are implemented for most Unix libraries, enabling a 32-bit PE module to call a 64-bit Unix library. Once the remaining modules are converted to PE, this will make it possible to run 32-bit applications without installing 32-bit Unix libraries.
*** Theming
- A "Light" theme is included in Wine, with the color variants "Blue" and "Classic Blue". It can be enabled through WineCfg.
- All the Common Controls support theming, and automatically refresh on theme changes.
- All the builtin applications support theming, as well as High DPI rendering.
*** Graphics
- There's a new Win32u library implementing the kernel side of graphics and window management support. Large portions of the GDI32 and USER32 libraries are converted to use this new library. This work will continue after 7.0, and the graphics drivers (winex11.drv, winemac.drv, etc.) will be migrated to Win32u as well.
- The Vulkan driver supports up to version 1.2.201 of the Vulkan spec.
- Hit-testing stroked geometries using the Direct2D API is implemented.
- Some initial support for Direct2D effects (using the ID2D1Effect interface) is implemented.
- The Direct2D API supports the ID2D1MultiThread interface.
- WindowsCodecs supports decoding images in WMP (Windows Media Photo) format, as well as encoding images to the DDS (DirectDraw Surface) format.
- WindowsCodecs no longer supports encoding images to macOS ICNS format. This is not supported on Windows, and was no longer used by Wine either.
*** Direct3D
- Various improvements have been made to the Vulkan renderer for the Wine Direct3D implementation. In most cases, for Direct3D 10 and 11 applications the Vulkan renderer should be about on-par with the older OpenGL renderer in Wine 7.0. Like in Wine 6.0, the Vulkan renderer can be enabled by setting the Direct3D "renderer" registry setting to "vulkan".
- The following Direct3D 10 and 11 features are implemented: - Deferred device contexts. - Device context state objects, and switching between them. - Constant buffer offsetting. - Resolving typeless multi-sample resources. - Clearing unordered-access views of texture resources. When using the OpenGL renderer, this requires the GL_ARB_clear_texture OpenGL extension. - Resource copies between resources with "block-compatible" formats, like for example DXGI_FORMAT_BC3_TYPELESS and DXGI_FORMAT_R32G32B32A32_TYPELESS. - Clearing layered render-target views.
- Support for multiple displays ("multi-head") is implemented. In practice, this tends to mean the ability to choose which monitor a Direct3D application will use for full-screen mode. Note that this depends on the underlying display drivers to accurately report the attached displays. For Wine's X11 driver, that requires proper support for version 1.4 or later of the X RandR extension.
- Display gamma adjustment using the DXGI API is implemented. This is sometimes used by Direct3D 10 and 11 applications to adjust screen "brightness".
- Direct3D 12 supports version 1.1 root signatures.
- When the VK_EXT_host_query_reset Vulkan extension is available, query handling in the Vulkan renderer is slightly more efficient.
- Retrieving swapchain present counts using the DXGI API is implemented.
- A fallback path using GDI is added for swapchain presentation. This is used in cases where OpenGL or Vulkan can't be used to present the swapchain, for example when presenting to a window of a different process. This path is much slower, but is often sufficient for some common use cases, like for example applications using the Chromium Embedded Framework ("CEF") with cross-process rendering.
- The "precise" shader instruction modifier is respected when using the GLSL shader backend.
- The DirectDraw API supports 3D rendering to system memory surfaces when using software device types like the "RGB", "MMX", and "Ramp" devices.
- The following additional graphics cards are recognized by the Direct3D graphics card database: - AMD Radeon RX 5500M - AMD Radeon RX 6800/6800 XT/6900 XT - AMD Van Gogh - Intel UHD Graphics 630 - NVIDIA GT 1030
- The following HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wine\Direct3D key is removed: - "UseGLSL" This setting was deprecated in favor of the "shader_backend" setting in Wine 5.0, and has been removed in this release.
*** D3DX
- The support for version 10 of the D3DX effects framework is much improved.
- D3DX 10 supports the Windows Media Photo (JPEG XR) image file format.
- Various D3DX10 texture creation functions (D3DX10CreateTextureFromMemory() and variants) are implemented.
- A partial implementation of the ID3DX10Sprite interface is added.
- A partial implementation of the ID3DX10Font interface is added.
*** Audio / video
- The DirectShow and Media Foundation GStreamer glue is unified into a single backend, making it easier to implement new media decoding APIs.
- The Windows Media asynchronous and synchronous reader objects are implemented based on the WineGStreamer backend. Like other multimedia decoding libraries, they require a functioning GStreamer installation.
- The Media Foundation support is more complete, with notably: - Basic functionality of IMFPMediaPlayer, media item properties, support for audio and video tracks. - Support for sample allocator in the Source Reader. - Improved EVR sink integration with presenter and mixer. - Improved SAR rendering buffer behavior. - Video sample allocator, with support for d3d9, d3d11, and system memory buffers. - Further improvements to EVR's presenter and mixer implementation. - D3D11 frame output for IMFMediaEngine. - Improvements to generic media source implementation in WineGStreamer to support stopped and paused states, refined output type configuration.
- The QuickTime decoder library (wineqtdecoder) is removed. GStreamer is required for all built-in multimedia codecs also on macOS.
*** Input devices
- The HID (Human Interface Device) stack implementation is more complete. This includes HID descriptor and report parsers, report processing, as well as HID mini-driver support.
- The winebus.sys driver backends are improved, to better describe the devices into HID reports when pass-through is not possible, and to add standard Physical Interface Device reports to expose force-feedback capabilities over HID.
- There's a new DirectInput joystick backend using the improved HID stack to communicate with winebus.sys and host devices. This backend supports force-feedback effects using the standard HID Physical Interface Device reports, and is also compatible with pass-through HID device which implement it. The SDL and evdev winebus.sys Linux backends are also supported as they implement it too. This replaces and deprecates the legacy Linux js and evdev, and macOS IOHID backends.
- The joystick control panel is improved, as well as the interaction with XInput-compatible devices. For such devices the joystick control panel can be used to force DInput as the primary interface instead of XInput. This translates to the "<joystick name>"="override" (REG_SZ) registry value in HKCU\Software\Wine\AppDefaults<app.exe>\DirectInput (or HKCU\Software\Wine\DirectInput for prefix-wide setting).
- The WinMM joystick support is implemented using DInput instead of Linux evdev or macOS IOHID, and the old joystick driver (winejoystick.drv) is removed.
- Many tests are added to the DInput module, using a virtual HID device to not require a physical device anymore. The code is extensively and automatically tested, including force-feedback effects with HID input / output report validation.
*** Text and fonts
- Arabic shaping is implemented in DirectWrite, currently enabled for Arabic and Syriac.
- The Font Set object is implemented in DirectWrite.
- The TextHost interface is properly implemented in RichEdit.
*** Mono / .NET
- The Mono engine is updated to version 7.0.0, with the following changes: - IDispatch interface supported on COM Callable Wrappers. - Improved support for SafeArray marshaling. - Many other marshaling and COM interop improvements. - Code imports from .NET Core: System.Drawing.Printing, System.Security.Principal, WindowsFormsApplicationBase, parts of Microsoft.VisualBasic.Interaction - WMA and WMV support in FNA using mfplat. - Debug symbols available separately in PDB form. - Old VBNC compiler for Visual Basic .NET replaced with the VBC compiler from .NET Core. - Mono's JIT compiler generates code compatible with 64-bit macOS. - WPF built with support for media controls. - A replacement for the Managed DirectX API is included. - Fixes for various bugs that prevented most WPF applications from working.
*** Internationalization
- Unicode character tables are based on version 14.0.0 of the Unicode Standard.
- The timezone data is updated, based on the information from the Olson and Unicode CLDR databases.
- Codepages 720 (Arabic, Farsi and Urdu) and 20949 (Korean Wansung) are supported.
- The sr-Latn-RS locale is supported.
*** Kernel
- Launching applications with the 'wine' executable invokes start.exe for any unrecognized binary. This means that file associations work also from the Unix command line, e.g. 'wine foo.msi'.
- The low-level NtAlertThreadByThreadId / NtWaitForAlertByThreadId synchronization mechanism (roughly equivalent to Linux futexes) is supported, and used to implement the higher-level synchronization primitives.
- NT debug objects are implemented and used by the kernel debugger functions.
- The dynamic registry keys for performance data are implemented.
*** C runtime
- There's a full math library implementation in the C runtime, mostly imported from the Musl C library. The Unix math library is no longer used.
- The floating point environment functions are supported properly on all CPU platforms.
*** Internet and networking
- IE11 compatibility mode is improved and used by default for standard-compliant HTML documents.
- JScript EcmaScript compliant mode supports 'let' statements, Map object, object freezing, object sealing and mutable prototype chains.
- Gecko add-on MSI packages are installed into the prefix on demand, instead of during prefix update, to make updates faster and reduce disk space usage.
- The DTLS communication protocol is supported.
- The NSI device (Network Store Interface) is implemented, and used to provide higher-level network services in IpHlpAPI.
- The Windows Sockets support is reimplemented to go through NTDLL and the Afd device, following the Windows architecture.
- The various network database files (/etc/protocols, /etc/networks, etc.) are provided and installed in the prefix. The equivalent Unix databases are no longer used for network queries.
*** Alternative platforms
- The new Apple Silicon Macs are supported, including running x86-64 binaries under Rosetta 2.
- GnuTLS is required on macOS for BCrypt and Secur32 support; the macOS-specific backend implementations have been removed.
- 32-bit ARM binaries are built in Thumb-2 mode, like on Windows.
- The preloader is also used on 32-bit ARM, for a more compatible address space layout.
- Stack unwinding is implemented on 32-bit ARM.
- More low-level system information queries like memory and battery status are supported on FreeBSD.
*** Builtin applications
- The REG registry tool supports operating on either the 32- or 64-bit view of the registry.
- The REG registry tool supports copying registry keys.
- The WineDump tool supports dumping Windows Metafiles, and shows more detailed information for CodeView records.
- The Wine Debugger (winedbg) supports debugging a 32-bit target process from the 64-bit debugger.
*** Development tools
- The IDL compiler (widl) supports loading type libraries embedded inside PE files.
- The IDL compiler searches for type libraries in the per-platform library search path instead of the include search path.
- The IDL compiler supports many more WinRT-specific constructs and attributes.
*** Build infrastructure
- All libraries are installed in architecture-specific directories, using names like 'i386-windows' for PE binaries, and 'x86_64-unix' for the Unix libraries. This enables supporting multiple architectures with a single Wine installation, as well as Winelib cross-compilation.
- Static (.a) import libraries are used on all platforms. Wine no longer generates the old-style .def libraries, though they are still supported for backwards compatibility.
- The option to prefer a native DLL by default is specified through a flag in the PE header, which can be set by passing the '--prefer-native option' to winebuild. The previous method, handling DLL_WINE_PREATTACH in DllMain, is no longer supported.
- The Dwarf debugging format is supported up to version 4. The Wine libraries are built with version 4 by default.
- Unique build identifiers can be stored in the binaries by passing the '--enable-build-id' option to configure.
- The Clang compiler in MSVC mode is supported.
*** Miscellaneous
- The Shell Folder naming is converted to use the Windows Vista+ scheme; for instance 'My Documents' becomes 'Documents', and most things are saved under the 'AppData' directory.
- The OpenCL library wrapper supports versions up to OpenCL 1.2.
- Paper forms are supported in various sizes in the WinSpool printer driver.
- There is initial support for MSDASQL, a Microsoft OLE DB provider for ODBC drivers.
*** External dependencies
- The following libraries are bundled in the source tree and built as PE libraries, so they are no longer required at the Unix level: - Faudio - GSM - LCMS2 - LibJPEG - LibJXR - LibMPG123 - LibPng - LibTiff - LibXml2 - LibXslt - Zlib
- The libraries above can still be imported as external libraries instead of using the bundled copy, provided that they are available in PE format. This behavior is requested with the '--with-system-dllpath' configure option, which specifies the Unix search path for such dependencies.
- Direct3D 12 support now requires version 1.2 or later of the vkd3d library. Version 1.2 or later of the related vkd3d-shader library was already required by Wine 6.0 for translation of Direct3D shader to SPIR-V in the Vulkan renderer for the Direct3D implementation.
- The deprecated HAL library is no longer supported or needed.
- The macOS QuickTime library is no longer used.