I noticed that in the absence of ~/.wine/config Wine simply refuses to start, and truss (on FreeBSD) and trace (on GNU/Linux) reveal that no other location is consulted for a config file.
Even explictly Using ETCDIR or `configure --sysconfdir` doesn't seem to make a difference, even though the documentation indicates otherwise:
http://www.winehq.com/Docs/wine-pkg/pkg-nonstatic.shtml#WINERC
ETCDIR/wine.conf
This is the global Wine configuration file. It is only used if the user running Wine has no local configuration file.
% ls -la $ETCDIR/wine.conf -r--r--r-- 1 root wheel 7616 Mar 11 13:59 /usr/local/etc/wine.conf % ls -la /home/pfeifer/.wine/config ls: /home/pfeifer/.wine/config: No such file or directory % wine Can't open configuration file /home/pfeifer/.wine/config
Gerald