It's not that the app wants the dll to be empty, it's that it can deal with the file not being there at all, but it can't deal with the file being there but empty (since that would never happen on Windows). So in many cases creating empty files makes things worse than not having the files at all.
What would the app do if it found the DLL but it was empty? Do you mean that it maps it and rummages around the headers manually?
Well, we seem to be in a bit of a quandry then. Some apps require the DLLs to be physically present, and others can't deal with it if they are but empty. So the only solution seems to be to actually have real PE DLLs in the virtual windows drive, but this would mean huge changes to Wine.
Hmmm. What about if the files aren't empty, but just contain the headers - would that make the apps you're thinking of happy?
thanks -mike