On Mon, Feb 06, 2006 at 11:41:40AM -0600, Dmitry Timoshkov wrote: : You seem to underestimate what the dependencies above mean for the : running Windows system. You depend on the *whole* kernel + GUI : subsystems, including registry and everything else. That's true : for Wine as well, just in the case of Wine you see all the dependencies, : not just the imports section of your exe file.
Sure. I understand that Windows is a whole different world where many things are done differently, and to provide a similar infrastructure on a Linux system, Wine has to go great lengths.
And indeed the progress that Wine has made since I've first looked at it (1996) is incredible and totally admirable.
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However, through all that progress supporting native Windows applications (which must be the main goal, of course), the "portable Windows GUI" idea has naturally fallen by the wayside somewhat, and the usefulness of Winelib as an application porting toolkit is therefore questionable.
Perhaps both goals (running as native Windows apps versus porting to native Linux apps) are mutually incompatible by nature.
That is in no way meant as a discouragement or some sort of critizism. It's just a summary of the lessons learned.
Regards,
Claus