Tomasz Czapiewski xeros@irc.pl on Aug 8, 2008 10:05 AM (PNT) wrote about Is Wine portable to ARM arch?
I wonder if someone has done successfull port of Wine for mobile/PDA Linux distributions on hardware with ARM processors.
No.
Is it possible?
Very likely but you run into the following: 1. Windows programs are written for the x86 processor. Is there an x86 emulator for the ARM arch? 2. Windows programs are mostly written for a minimum of a 640 by 480 pixel display. I know of very few devices that run at that, or higher, resolution. 3. Are the ARM processors 'strong' enough to run both a x86 emulator AND Wine AND provide acceptable performance of many Windows programs.
If no then are there any plans for multiplatform code in Wine?
NO! Even MacOSX specific code is not allowed
There are many Linux users of such hardware (like Neo FreeRunner etc.) which would like to use Windows applications on their portable ARM-based devices.
Don't know. Most functions are provided by other systems. I know that Windows CE (aka Portable Windows) does exist for some handheld devices. The key is to get folks to write software for that platform. My point three above shows why Wine is written, mostly, for x86 devices. It would be nice to see Wine ported to other platforms. Technically, this is possible, however would it provide satisfactory performance as well is key to user satisfaction.
James McKenzie
On Fri, Aug 8, 2008 at 1:39 PM, James Mckenzie jjmckenzie51@earthlink.net wrote:
If no then are there any plans for multiplatform code in Wine?
NO! Even MacOSX specific code is not allowed
Is there an FAQ that explains why this is so?
If no then are there any plans for multiplatform code in Wine?
NO! Even MacOSX specific code is not allowed
Is there an FAQ that explains why this is so?
I don't think this statement is accurate. The problem is "multiplatform" is ambiguous. If a "platform" is an operating system, multiplatform code is certainly allowed in Wine, though portable code is preferred to OS-specific code whenever possible. If a "platform" is a CPU, then with the exception of x86, assembly is not allowed, as there are so few non-x86 Windows binaries that this is essentially worthless. Similarly, the goal of Wine is _not_ to emulate the x86 CPU, so such emulation code is likewise not allowed in Wine. --Juan
2008/8/8 Timothy Normand Miller theosib@gmail.com:
On Fri, Aug 8, 2008 at 1:39 PM, James Mckenzie jjmckenzie51@earthlink.net wrote:
If no then are there any plans for multiplatform code in Wine?
NO! Even MacOSX specific code is not allowed
Is there an FAQ that explains why this is so?
http://www.winehq.org/site/docs/winedev-guide/index, specifically http://www.winehq.org/site/docs/winedev-guide/porting.
- Reece
On Fri, Aug 8, 2008 at 10:39 AM, James Mckenzie jjmckenzie51@earthlink.net wrote:
NO! Even MacOSX specific code is not allowed
grep -rI __APPLE__ wine-git/ | wc -l returns 68.
Very likely but you run into the following:
- Windows programs are written for the x86 processor. Is there an
x86 emulator for the ARM arch?
You could run wince / windows mobile apps which are often ARM native.
If no then are there any plans for multiplatform code in Wine?
NO! Even MacOSX specific code is not allowed
Actually we have quite a bit of that. dlls/winecoreaudio.drv, using a few macos specific opengl extensions in wined3d, etc. The important thing is that it is properly abstracted and not an #ifdef orgy.
2008/8/8 Stefan Dösinger stefan@codeweavers.com:
Very likely but you run into the following:
- Windows programs are written for the x86 processor. Is there an
x86 emulator for the ARM arch?
You could run wince / windows mobile apps which are often ARM native.
Unfortunately WinCE isn't completely compatible with win32, so I doubt that'll work without quite a bit of extra effort.
2008/8/8 Juan Lang juan.lang@gmail.com:
At the risk of getting even more off topic, Objective-C is one of gcc's dialects and works on Linux and *BSD just as fine as on Mac OS X.
Yes, I know, and so is C++. Nevertheless, neither is allowed in
And so is Fortran, for that matter :-)
On Fri, 8 Aug 2008, James Mckenzie wrote:
Tomasz Czapiewski xeros@irc.pl on Aug 8, 2008 10:05 AM (PNT) wrote about Is Wine portable to ARM arch?
I wonder if someone has done successfull port of Wine for mobile/PDA Linux distributions on hardware with ARM processors.
No.
Is it possible?
Very likely but you run into the following:
- Windows programs are written for the x86 processor. Is there an x86 emulator for the ARM arch?
That's the problem I thought about. So it would be needed something like qemu-i386 or sth. for userspace emulation.
- Windows programs are mostly written for a minimum of a 640 by 480 pixel display. I know of very few devices that run at that, or higher, resolution.
I'm talking about devices with 480x640/640x480 (Neo 1973/FreeRunner) and bigger display (800x480... like Nokia N810 etc.).
- Are the ARM processors 'strong' enough to run both a x86 emulator AND Wine AND provide acceptable performance of many Windows programs.
My intention was not to run Windows games but simple programs (like Mikrotik WinBox etc.) and ARM processors clocked at 400-600MHz could be enough such basic emulation.
If no then are there any plans for multiplatform code in Wine?
NO! Even MacOSX specific code is not allowed
There are many Linux users of such hardware (like Neo FreeRunner etc.) which would like to use Windows applications on their portable ARM-based devices.
Don't know. Most functions are provided by other systems. I know that Windows CE (aka Portable Windows) does exist for some handheld devices. The key is to get folks to write software for that platform. My point three above shows why Wine is written, mostly, for x86 devices. It would be nice to see Wine ported to other platforms. Technically, this is possible, however would it provide satisfactory performance as well is key to user satisfaction.
James McKenzie
Thank you very much for comprehensive answers.
Tomasz Czapiewski
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H. Verbeet -
James Mckenzie -
Juan Lang -
Lei Zhang -
Reece Dunn -
Stefan Dösinger -
Timothy Normand Miller -
Tomasz Czapiewski