Andrew Eikum a CodeWeavers employee and Wine developer is writing a series of post to introduce people to Wine usage and development.
This is a series of guides intended to introduce software developers to the Wine ecosystem. It will cover what Wine is, how to use Wine, how to debug Wine, how to fix Wine, and what to do with your fix once you've made it.
The guide will be published throughout January.
Now that you have Wine built, try running it:
The
On first run, Wine sets up a virtual Windows filesystems containing a
A typical Wine prefix looks like this:
The
The
The
The application you installed is probably located in Program Files. You can change into that directory and go poke around its files, just like you could on Windows. You can also run Wine from that directory:
If you are running applications directly like this, be mindful of your working directory. While many applications aren't sensitive to this, some assume that you launched it from the directory specified in the shortcut file that it created. This is not always the same directory in which the executable lives.
If you run Wine from a build directory, like we have been here, then Wine will look up its library files from that build directory. This is as opposed to running from a system installation, where it will look up libraries in
By now, you should understand that Wine is capable of running arbitrary software that was written for Windows. This includes software and libraries that Microsoft has written. Many of the components that Windows applications depend on are distributed with the application in the form of "redistributables," which contain Microsoft-written libraries. While these weren't intended for Wine, they are Windows applications like any other, so they do work in Wine.
Typically these redistributables drop DLLs into
Since Wine tries to reimplement Microsoft code, these native libraries are by definition "correct." And unfortunately, Wine is not yet perfect. As a result, software running against native libraries will often work better than when running against Wine DLLs. This can be useful for end-users who just want to run their software.
However, you must be very careful when using native DLLs as a developer. Wine developers must never reverse-engineer actual Microsoft-owned code, and that includes using native libraries and using Wine's debugging features to determine what they are doing. There are no exceptions to this rule, so please understand the native vs built-in state of any libraries you are working on or debugging. Any developer found to be reverse-engineering in this manner may be banned from contributing to Wine. The correct way to determine the behavior of native components is to write software like any other application developer and test the behavior of those components as a black box. This will be discussed more later in these guides.
On a Windows system, system libraries are installed into
As discussed above, Wine's libraries live in the build tree if you are running Wine from the build tree. They are named with the
Wine can be configured to run inside of a "virtual desktop." This is a single window, inside of which all of the Windows applications run. This can be extremely useful when testing fullscreen games, as this will prevent them changing the display resolution and you can still access other windows on your desktop. See the Graphics tab in winecfg.
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About This Guide
This is a series of guides intended to introduce software developers to the Wine ecosystem. It will cover what Wine is, how to use Wine, how to debug Wine, how to fix Wine, and what to do with your fix once you've made it.
The guide will be published throughout January.
- Part 1 describes what Wine is and provides a short description of various popular forks of Wine.
- Part 2 describes Wine's build process.
- Part 3 describes how to use Wine as a developer.
- Part 4 describes how to debug Wine in general.
- Part 5 describes Wine's source tree layout and how to edit the source.
- Part 6 describes how you can send your work upstream.
Now that you have Wine built, try running it:
$ ./wine.win64/wine winecfg The
wine executable in the 64-bit build directory is
your primary interface for running Wine. Use it to install whatever
software you are trying to get functional: $ cd ~/software/MyFavoriteApp/
$ ~/src/wine.win64/wine Setup.exe
Wine prefixes
On first run, Wine sets up a virtual Windows filesystems containing a
C:
drive and a bunch of other files to mimic a real Windows installation.
The virtual Windows filesystem is called a "prefix." The default Wine
prefix is located at $HOME/.wine/. You can override this location with the WINEPREFIX
environment variable. This can be useful to set up experimental
prefixes which you can destroy later without affecting other prefixes.A typical Wine prefix looks like this:
./dosdevices/
c: -> ../drive_c
com1 -> /dev/ttyS0
com2 -> /dev/ttyS1
com3 -> /dev/ttyS2
com4 -> /dev/ttyS3
d:: -> /dev/sr0
z: -> /
./drive_c/
Program Files/
users/
windows/
./system.reg
./userdef.reg
./user.reg
The
dosdevices folder contains DOS drives in the form of symlinks to folders or special devices. When an application tries to open C:\some_file.txt, the c: symlink here will cause Wine to instead open $WINEPREFIX/dosdevices/../drive_c/some_file.txt.The
drive_c folder is where the contents of a typical Windows installation live, like the Windows folder and the Program Files folders.The
.reg files contain Wine's representation of the Windows registry. These are stored in a format similar to the Windows regedit .reg
format. Rather than use regedit, you can actually edit these files with
a text editor directly to modify the registry (though you shouldn't do
that while Wine is running).The application you installed is probably located in Program Files. You can change into that directory and go poke around its files, just like you could on Windows. You can also run Wine from that directory:
$ cd '~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Steam/'
$ ~/src/wine.win64/wine Steam.exe
If you are running applications directly like this, be mindful of your working directory. While many applications aren't sensitive to this, some assume that you launched it from the directory specified in the shortcut file that it created. This is not always the same directory in which the executable lives.
Running Wine from a build directory
If you run Wine from a build directory, like we have been here, then Wine will look up its library files from that build directory. This is as opposed to running from a system installation, where it will look up libraries in
/usr/lib/wine, for example. This means that
you can make changes to one Wine component, build just that one
component, and then run Wine and observe the changes. No need for a
top-level make or an install round trip.Native vs built-in components
By now, you should understand that Wine is capable of running arbitrary software that was written for Windows. This includes software and libraries that Microsoft has written. Many of the components that Windows applications depend on are distributed with the application in the form of "redistributables," which contain Microsoft-written libraries. While these weren't intended for Wine, they are Windows applications like any other, so they do work in Wine.
Typically these redistributables drop DLLs into
C:\windows\system32. When Wine is asked to load some DLL from system32,
it will notice that these libraries are not Wine DLLs and will
determine what to do on a per-library basis. The technical details of
this are beyond the scope of this guide, but you can control whether
Wine will prefer the Microsoft-owned DLLs (called "native") or the
Wine-created DLLs (called "built-in") by using winecfg.Since Wine tries to reimplement Microsoft code, these native libraries are by definition "correct." And unfortunately, Wine is not yet perfect. As a result, software running against native libraries will often work better than when running against Wine DLLs. This can be useful for end-users who just want to run their software.
However, you must be very careful when using native DLLs as a developer. Wine developers must never reverse-engineer actual Microsoft-owned code, and that includes using native libraries and using Wine's debugging features to determine what they are doing. There are no exceptions to this rule, so please understand the native vs built-in state of any libraries you are working on or debugging. Any developer found to be reverse-engineering in this manner may be banned from contributing to Wine. The correct way to determine the behavior of native components is to write software like any other application developer and test the behavior of those components as a black box. This will be discussed more later in these guides.
Fake DLLs and .dll.so files
On a Windows system, system libraries are installed into
C:\windows\system32 (and C:\windows\syswow64
for 32-bit DLLs on a 64-bit system). Wine also installs DLLs into this
directory. Some applications actually open these files directly and
expect them to be valid Windows DLLs. However, Wine does not actually
use the DLL file format for most of its own libraries. Instead these
"fake DLLs" simply instruct Wine to load its real libraries, in whatever
format is native to the underlying operating system (e.g. ELF).As discussed above, Wine's libraries live in the build tree if you are running Wine from the build tree. They are named with the
.dll.so extension. If Wine was installed someplace, then they will live in the lib/wine directory, for example in /usr/lib/wine and /usr/lib32/wine/.
If you make changes to a Wine library and want to replace a single
component in an existing Wine installation, you can just copy the .dll.so file into the appropriate location. Modifying the fake DLL in the Wine prefix will do nothing useful.Tip: Virtual Desktop
Wine can be configured to run inside of a "virtual desktop." This is a single window, inside of which all of the Windows applications run. This can be extremely useful when testing fullscreen games, as this will prevent them changing the display resolution and you can still access other windows on your desktop. See the Graphics tab in winecfg.
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