On 5/30/06, n0dalus n0dalus@gmail.com wrote:
It would be really great if someone could document the patch and explain what exactly is stopping WoW from working (as well as which changes would cause problems for other programs).
It's a bug in WoW itself, it relies upon the exact way NT maps memory which is different to how Linux does it. I guess they are storing information in the high bits of a pointer somewhere or some similar trick.
The patch is a hack that makes Wine follow the Windows method - unfortunately it will happily force an allocation to an area that is already allocated. Right now it relies on pure luck to avoid blasting a previous allocation. Expect random undebuggable failures with this technique.
I think there would be more chance of getting developers working on the problem if the problems involved were clearer and easier to see/understand.
The real issue is that it seems not many Wine developers play WoW themselves ;)
Given the amount of users who use wine to run WoW, would it be possible to have the patch included with a compile-time option? Would it even be possible to make the patch a runtime feature?
Doubtful. You'd have to ask Alexandre. He may know of a different solution also. Wine has a policy of not accepting application specific hacks though there are a few generic hacks in there.
You'd be better off IMHO by preparing your own Wine binary install that is specific to WoW itself.
thanks -mike