This patch adds a switch, /startfile, to explorer.exe, used as "wine explorer /startfile filename". It accepts a windows or unix path. It attempts to mimic what windows explorer does to start files and provide some visible (gui) feedback when it doesn't work. The idea is that wine.desktop can then be modified to use this switch instead of wine, solving the following problems when starting exe files from file managers: * File managers typically do not set the working directory to the directory that contains an exe when they start it. Setting the working directory is the default behavior for windows explorer, and many windows programs rely on it. * File managers naturally use the unix path to start files, and the wine binary passes the unix path along to the exe it starts, rather than translating it to a windows path (this can and probably should also be fixed somewhere else). * Windows explorer always starts exe files with quotes around the path in the command-line, even if the path does not contain spaces. The wine binary does not (and probably should not) add quotes in this situation. A few apps rely on the quotes. See http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5224#c14
My last attempt created a new winelib program; apparently this functionality fits in explorer.