Is it common for Visual Basic applications to have problems installing under Wine? Take the recent post by Denis, for instance. He's trying to install a fairly complex Visual Basic app that uses MDAC, and the installer just won't run properly under Wine. (I've corresponded with him privately, and can give more details if desired.)
I have this feeling that this isn't an isolated instance. Maybe there are hundreds of thousands of businesses and government offices that have large collections of VB apps written in-house, not yet ported over to VB.NET, which they'd like to run under Wine -- but they take one look at the trouble they have installing, and give up.
Does anyone have experience rolling VB (not VB.net) apps here? Is it easy to create VB apps that install fine under Windows, but not under Wine?
Dan Kegel wrote:
Is it common for Visual Basic applications to have problems installing under Wine?
I'm not sure about this. The question is: are there some common installers that are used in VB applications? Or is everybody point and clicking his own installer?
Take the recent post by Denis, for instance. He's trying to install a fairly complex Visual Basic app that uses MDAC, and the installer just won't run properly under Wine. (I've corresponded with him privately, and can give more details if desired.)
The installers of the most VB applications i have played with installed fine. One failed though due to bugs in VarCmp() and i think it was VarDiv(). I have quick fixes for those bugs in my tree but have no time at the moment to do the correct fixes with test cases and submit them. But the VB applications i tried where small applications.
I have this feeling that this isn't an isolated instance. Maybe there are hundreds of thousands of businesses and government offices that have large collections of VB apps written in-house, not yet ported over to VB.NET, which they'd like to run under Wine -- but they take one look at the trouble they have installing, and give up.
Are there any numbers to back this affirmation? My experience with the couple of small VB applications i tried is that the installer worked better than the program afterwards. I have to agree that a good support for VB would be good for the adoption of Wine as VB seems to be the shell/awk/perl/whatever scripts of Windows users.
Does anyone have experience rolling VB (not VB.net) apps
Not me as i do not need Wine; i mean besides having fun hacking on it. And oleaut32 (used extensively by VB apps) has a lot of low hanging fruits aka missing features/bugs; to bad i do not have much time for Wine lately.
here? Is it easy to create VB apps that install fine under Windows, but not under Wine?
bye michael
On 10/20/05, Michael Stefaniuc mstefani@redhat.com wrote:
Dan Kegel wrote:
Is it common for Visual Basic applications to have problems installing under Wine?
I'm not sure about this. The question is: are there some common installers that are used in VB applications? Or is everybody point and clicking his own installer?
One common flavor of installer is the one that Microsoft shipped with VB studio; it's the kind of installer that one uses when the software to install is unpacked already on a LAN, so the installer just needs to copy files to the local machine. Other than that, I think the installers are probably the same as for C++ apps.
The installers of the most VB applications i have played with installed fine. One failed though due to bugs in VarCmp() and i think it was VarDiv(). I have quick fixes for those bugs in my tree but have no time at the moment to do the correct fixes with test cases and submit them.
Can you submit the rough patch as a work-in-progress?
Maybe there are hundreds of thousands of businesses and government offices that have large collections of VB apps written in-house ... they take one look at the trouble they have installing, and give up.
Are there any numbers to back this affirmation? My experience with the couple of small VB applications i tried is that the installer worked better than the program afterwards.
Here's what I know: the city governments of Munich, Mannheim, and one in Brazil say they have a subtantial number of VB applications, but they have not said that any of them install properly under Wine. I'm starting to focus now on this kind of application so I can understand the problem better. My first app is Church Windows; it's difficult to install because it assumes you have MFC40, MFC42, and the VB Runtime already installed, because it checks the IE6 version, *and* because it installs fonts that confuse Wine. Once you get past all that, it fails on startup with an "automation error" -- this is probably one of the low-hanging fruit you mentioned.
I have to agree that a good support for VB would be good for the adoption of Wine as VB seems to be the shell/awk/perl/whatever scripts of Windows users.
Indeed.
Does anyone have experience rolling VB (not VB.net) apps
Not me as i do not need Wine; i mean besides having fun hacking on it. And oleaut32 (used extensively by VB apps) has a lot of low hanging fruits aka missing features/bugs; to bad i do not have much time for Wine lately.
On 10/20/05, Dan Kegel daniel.r.kegel@gmail.com wrote:
can understand the problem better. My first app is Church Windows; it's difficult to install because it assumes you have MFC40, MFC42, and the VB Runtime already installed, because it checks the IE6 version,
It might be interesting to begin sifting through everything Microsoft has distributed these DLL's with to find out if there's any that allow redistribution. If they're redistributable then this simply becomes a packaging issue as a quick fix. Barring that, if MS allows for redistribution of those DLL's with a valid VB app, then maybe someone can write a simple VB program and distribute the DLL's with it.
-Brian
On 10/20/05, Brian Vincent brian.vincent@gmail.com wrote:
... if MS allows for redistribution of those DLL's with a valid VB app, then maybe someone can write a simple VB program and distribute the DLL's with it.
The thought had crossed my mind! After all, Wine could really use a few good Visual Basic games :-)
A little quick Google searching turns up a few games that might qualify: http://sourceforge.net/projects/oreproject/ http://www.geocities.com/Lukman_VB/VBGaming/Game.htm
Dan Kegel wrote:
On 10/20/05, Michael Stefaniuc mstefani@redhat.com wrote:
Dan Kegel wrote:
The installers of the most VB applications i have played with installed fine. One failed though due to bugs in VarCmp() and i think it was VarDiv(). I have quick fixes for those bugs in my tree but have no time at the moment to do the correct fixes with test cases and submit them.
Can you submit the rough patch as a work-in-progress?
Just sent the 2 patches to wine-patches. Those patches aren't work in progress as the real fixes would be to rewrite the functions VarDiv() and VarCmp() based on extensive tests (Basicaly permutating through all possible combination of input variants. I have those almost ready but they crash Wine.). Something similar to what i did for VarMul and VarAdd.
bye michael
On 10/21/05, Michael Stefaniuc mstefani@redhat.com wrote:
Just sent the 2 patches to wine-patches. Those patches aren't work in progress as the real fixes would be to rewrite the functions VarDiv() and VarCmp() based on extensive tests (Basicaly permutating through all possible combination of input variants. I have those almost ready but they crash Wine.). Something similar to what i did for VarMul and VarAdd.
Thanks! But I can't see the body of the patch, not in http://www.winehq.org/pipermail/wine-patches/2005-October/021429.html nor in http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.emulators.wine.patches/19179 Did you forget to insert it? - Dan
-
Brian Vincent -
Dan Kegel -
Michael Stefaniuc