Folks,
A new page has appeared in the Wine constellation <g>. It is still a work in progress, but I hope to release version 0.1 in the next few days, once I have a change to add what I've done on PuTTY, and Visual-MinGW.
Check it out: http://www.dssd.ca/wine/Winelib-Apps.html
Comments, suggestions, flames -- all welcome!
Am Fre, 2002-11-22 um 23.52 schrieb Dimitrie O. Paun:
http://www.dssd.ca/wine/Winelib-Apps.html
Comments, suggestions, flames -- all welcome!
Just for curiosity:
Apart from debugging + improving Winelib, is there a reason why you try to build these as Winelib apps rather than running the native Windows apps in Wine instead?
I recommend to put a statement about this on the page because I feel this is a question many people will ask themselves.
Martin
On November 25, 2002 07:12 am, Martin Wilck wrote:
Apart from debugging + improving Winelib, is there a reason why you try to build these as Winelib apps rather than running the native Windows apps in Wine instead?
Well, I thought I've explained that in Introduction/Why:
But what do we hope to achieve? Well, the purpose of this project is four-fold:
* Document our experience on porting these applications to Winelib * Improve Winelib based on the above such that the porting process becomes very simple * Update the Winelib User's Guide to the latest porting process * Fixing header & library problems in the process.
I'm not sure I want to add a statement why you should NOT do it... :)
Dimi wrote:
On November 25, 2002 07:12 am, Martin Wilck wrote:
Apart from debugging + improving Winelib, is there a reason why you try to build these as Winelib apps rather than running the native Windows apps in Wine instead?
Well, I thought I've explained that in Introduction/Why:
I guess the first Martin's question is why do we prefer Winelib apps more then Windows apps? My answer is: with Winelib app we gain source code portability (for example to other hardware platforms).
Then the rest looks obvious: we have to show an easy way to convert Windows apps to Winelib apps, and Dimi is doing just that.
On November 25, 2002 03:02 pm, Waldek Hebisch wrote:
I guess the first Martin's question is why do we prefer Winelib apps more then Windows apps? My answer is: with Winelib app we gain source code portability (for example to other hardware platforms).
Good point. But the page is not intended to justify the existance of Winelib, but why we should make more use of it. Maybe I should add something about "Why have a Winelib app in the first place?"...
Am Mon, 2002-11-25 um 22.56 schrieb Dimitrie O. Paun:
Good point. But the page is not intended to justify the existance of Winelib, but why we should make more use of it. Maybe I should add something about "Why have a Winelib app in the first place?"...
There are some applications where you simply have no chance of just runnning the native Windows app on Wine.
Winelib can be a solution for porting such software to Linux by only rewriting those parts that need to be rewritten, replacing NT with Unix functionality. This is much easier than doing a native port; most of the application's code can be left untouched.
IMO this is the "real world" reason for doing Winelib development - you can *combine* Windows and Unix code. OTOH Putty and Mozilla are apps that I'd expect to be able to run natively.
The reasons for Winelib work you give on your page are ok but sort of self-referential: They only make sense to people who have already accepted as a fact that Winelib is a good thing.
Martin
On November 26, 2002 04:18 am, Martin Wilck wrote:
The reasons for Winelib work you give on your page are ok but sort of self-referential: They only make sense to people who have already accepted as a fact that Winelib is a good thing.
It is meant to be this way. Maybe I haven't made this clear, by my goal is to improve Winelib, not to port applications to Linux. To that end, I think it's better to start with applications we know are working under Wine. Mozilla, Putty, etc. Fall under this category. It's easier to fight one battle at a time, rather then solve the world problems all at once. :)
You are correct that the real life reason for using Winelib is to port parts of applications that are not easily supported through Wine, and instead mix in some Unix code. But such porting efforts are much more difficult and extensive than what I have there, and it's purpose is rather different. In fact, it wouldn't even belong on the page, IMO.
Just to make things a bit clear: my goal is to get enough experience porting applications to Linux using Winelib (and what better way to gain said experience other than doing a few ports ourselves), such that we can understand and fix the Winelib process, and make it trivial for applications to be ported over. In other words, I'd like to see the explanation on how to port an app get a lot smaller than it is today.
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Dimitrie O. Paun -
Martin Wilck -
Waldek Hebisch