On Thu, Aug 11, 2011 at 6:18 PM, Vincent Povirk madewokherd@gmail.com wrote:
I'm not sure DOSBox is able to competently open some random executable file. One would have to make a config file that sets up a drive mapping, runs the file, and quits. If Wine can do these things (and maybe also properly handle cases where the COM executable expects to be run on a windows machine or, say, a dos machine with win3.1 installed), it seems like a fine choice to me.
There's a non-zero chance that wine start /unix will actually start cmd and make a terminal for BAT files. It makes one for console executables. If it doesn't, there's a possibility that start.exe will do that on Windows, in which case that is a Wine bug that we should fix. You should test that before making a new thing.
There was some talk on #mono (or #monodev) to the effect that the arbitration mechanism for different kinds of files is called mime types, and a DOS exe, x86/x64 PE exe, and CLR exe are all different and should have different mime types.
On Windows, double-clicking a BAT file causes it to open in a terminal window which automatically closes after the file is finished running, whereas using "start" cause the terminal window to stay open even after the file is finished running.
On Wine using "start" wrongly closes the Window automatically, but since that's what we want for a double-clicked BAT file, "wineconsole" has the same behaviour and can be used instead. Unfortunately wineconsole doesn't like *nix paths, so it can't be used from a .desktop file directly...