Sweden-Number/ANNOUNCE

The Wine team is proud to announce that the stable release Wine 7.0
is now available.

This release represents a year of development effort and over 9,100
individual changes. It contains a large number of improvements that
are listed in the release notes below. The areas of major changes are:

  - Most modules converted to PE format.
  - Better theming support, with a bundled theme for a more modern look.
  - Vastly improved HID stack and joystick support.
  - New WoW64 architecture.

The source is available from the following locations:

  https://dl.winehq.org/wine/source/7.0/wine-7.0.tar.xz
  http://mirrors.ibiblio.org/wine/source/7.0/wine-7.0.tar.xz

Binary packages for various distributions will be available from:

  https://www.winehq.org/download

You will find documentation on https://www.winehq.org/documentation

You can also get the current source directly from the git
repository. Check https://www.winehq.org/git for details.

Wine is available thanks to the work of many people. See the file
AUTHORS in the distribution for the complete list.

----------------------------------------------------------------

What's new in Wine 7.0
======================

*** PE modules

- With a few exceptions, all modules can be built in PE format. The goal is to
  convert the remaining modules after 7.0.

- For PE modules with an associated Unix library, the interface between the PE
  part and the Unix part goes through a standard NT system call. This enables
  hiding the Unix code from Windows debuggers, and switching the thread
  register on platforms that require it.

- Builtin dlls are only loaded if there is a corresponding PE file on disk,
  either a real binary or a fake PE module. This ensures that the application
  always sees a valid PE file mapping. It can be disabled through the
  WINEBOOTSTRAPMODE environment variable, used at prefix creation time.


*** WoW64

- The 64-bit Windows-on-Windows (WoW64) architecture is implemented, and
  supports running a 32-bit Windows application inside a 64-bit Unix host
  process, using thunks to map 32-bit NT system calls to the 64-bit NTDLL.

- WoW64 thunks are implemented for most Unix libraries, enabling a 32-bit PE
  module to call a 64-bit Unix library. Once the remaining modules are
  converted to PE, this will make it possible to run 32-bit applications
  without installing 32-bit Unix libraries.


*** Theming

- A "Light" theme is included in Wine, with the color variants "Blue" and
  "Classic Blue". It can be enabled through WineCfg.

- All the Common Controls support theming, and automatically refresh on theme
  changes.

- All the builtin applications support theming, as well as High DPI rendering.

 
*** Graphics

- There's a new Win32u library implementing the kernel side of graphics and
  window management support. Large portions of the GDI32 and USER32 libraries
  are converted to use this new library. This work will continue after 7.0, and
  the graphics drivers (winex11.drv, winemac.drv, etc.) will be migrated to
  Win32u as well.

- The Vulkan driver supports up to version 1.2.201 of the Vulkan spec.

- Hit-testing stroked geometries using the Direct2D API is implemented.

- Some initial support for Direct2D effects (using the ID2D1Effect interface)
  is implemented.

- The Direct2D API supports the ID2D1MultiThread interface.

- WindowsCodecs supports decoding images in WMP (Windows Media Photo) format,
  as well as encoding images to the DDS (DirectDraw Surface) format.

- WindowsCodecs no longer supports encoding images to macOS ICNS format. This
  is not supported on Windows, and was no longer used by Wine either.


*** Direct3D

- Various improvements have been made to the Vulkan renderer for the Wine
  Direct3D implementation. In most cases, for Direct3D 10 and 11 applications
  the Vulkan renderer should be about on-par with the older OpenGL renderer in
  Wine 7.0. Like in Wine 6.0, the Vulkan renderer can be enabled by setting the
  Direct3D "renderer" registry setting to "vulkan".

- The following Direct3D 10 and 11 features are implemented:
  - Deferred device contexts.
  - Device context state objects, and switching between them.
  - Constant buffer offsetting.
  - Resolving typeless multi-sample resources.
  - Clearing unordered-access views of texture resources. When using the OpenGL
    renderer, this requires the GL_ARB_clear_texture OpenGL extension.
  - Resource copies between resources with "block-compatible" formats, like for
    example DXGI_FORMAT_BC3_TYPELESS and DXGI_FORMAT_R32G32B32A32_TYPELESS.
  - Clearing layered render-target views.

- Support for multiple displays ("multi-head") is implemented. In practice,
  this tends to mean the ability to choose which monitor a Direct3D application
  will use for full-screen mode. Note that this depends on the underlying
  display drivers to accurately report the attached displays. For Wine's X11
  driver, that requires proper support for version 1.4 or later of the X RandR
  extension.

- Display gamma adjustment using the DXGI API is implemented. This is sometimes
  used by Direct3D 10 and 11 applications to adjust screen "brightness".

- Direct3D 12 supports version 1.1 root signatures.

- When the VK_EXT_host_query_reset Vulkan extension is available, query
  handling in the Vulkan renderer is slightly more efficient.

- Retrieving swapchain present counts using the DXGI API is implemented.

- A fallback path using GDI is added for swapchain presentation. This is used
  in cases where OpenGL or Vulkan can't be used to present the swapchain, for
  example when presenting to a window of a different process. This path is much
  slower, but is often sufficient for some common use cases, like for example
  applications using the Chromium Embedded Framework ("CEF") with cross-process
  rendering.

- The "precise" shader instruction modifier is respected when using the GLSL
  shader backend.

- The DirectDraw API supports 3D rendering to system memory surfaces when using
  software device types like the "RGB", "MMX", and "Ramp" devices.

- The following additional graphics cards are recognized by the Direct3D
  graphics card database:
  - AMD Radeon RX 5500M
  - AMD Radeon RX 6800/6800 XT/6900 XT
  - AMD Van Gogh
  - Intel UHD Graphics 630
  - NVIDIA GT 1030

- The following HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wine\Direct3D key is removed:
  - "UseGLSL"
    This setting was deprecated in favor of the "shader_backend" setting in
    Wine 5.0, and has been removed in this release.


*** D3DX

- The support for version 10 of the D3DX effects framework is much improved.

- D3DX 10 supports the Windows Media Photo (JPEG XR) image file format.

- Various D3DX10 texture creation functions (D3DX10CreateTextureFromMemory()
  and variants) are implemented.

- A partial implementation of the ID3DX10Sprite interface is added.

- A partial implementation of the ID3DX10Font interface is added.


*** Audio / video

- The DirectShow and Media Foundation GStreamer glue is unified into a single
  backend, making it easier to implement new media decoding APIs.

- The Windows Media asynchronous and synchronous reader objects are implemented
  based on the WineGStreamer backend. Like other multimedia decoding libraries,
  they require a functioning GStreamer installation.

- The Media Foundation support is more complete, with notably:
  - Basic functionality of IMFPMediaPlayer, media item properties, support for
    audio and video tracks.
  - Support for sample allocator in the Source Reader.
  - Improved EVR sink integration with presenter and mixer.
  - Improved SAR rendering buffer behavior.
  - Video sample allocator, with support for d3d9, d3d11, and system memory
    buffers.
  - Further improvements to EVR's presenter and mixer implementation.
  - D3D11 frame output for IMFMediaEngine.
  - Improvements to generic media source implementation in WineGStreamer to
    support stopped and paused states, refined output type configuration.

- The QuickTime decoder library (wineqtdecoder) is removed. GStreamer is
  required for all built-in multimedia codecs also on macOS.


*** Input devices

- The HID (Human Interface Device) stack implementation is more complete. This
  includes HID descriptor and report parsers, report processing, as well as HID
  mini-driver support.

- The winebus.sys driver backends are improved, to better describe the devices
  into HID reports when pass-through is not possible, and to add standard
  Physical Interface Device reports to expose force-feedback capabilities over
  HID.

- There's a new DirectInput joystick backend using the improved HID stack to
  communicate with winebus.sys and host devices. This backend supports
  force-feedback effects using the standard HID Physical Interface Device
  reports, and is also compatible with pass-through HID device which implement
  it. The SDL and evdev winebus.sys Linux backends are also supported as they
  implement it too. This replaces and deprecates the legacy Linux js and evdev,
  and macOS IOHID backends.

- The joystick control panel is improved, as well as the interaction with
  XInput-compatible devices. For such devices the joystick control panel can be
  used to force DInput as the primary interface instead of XInput. This
  translates to the "<joystick name>"="override" (REG_SZ) registry value in
  HKCU\Software\Wine\AppDefaults\<app.exe>\DirectInput (or
  HKCU\Software\Wine\DirectInput for prefix-wide setting).

- The WinMM joystick support is implemented using DInput instead of Linux evdev
  or macOS IOHID, and the old joystick driver (winejoystick.drv) is removed.

- Many tests are added to the DInput module, using a virtual HID device to not
  require a physical device anymore. The code is extensively and automatically
  tested, including force-feedback effects with HID input / output report
  validation.


*** Text and fonts

- Arabic shaping is implemented in DirectWrite, currently enabled for Arabic
  and Syriac.

- The Font Set object is implemented in DirectWrite.

- The TextHost interface is properly implemented in RichEdit.


*** Mono / .NET

- The Mono engine is updated to version 7.0.0, with the following changes:
  - IDispatch interface supported on COM Callable Wrappers.
  - Improved support for SafeArray marshaling.
  - Many other marshaling and COM interop improvements.
  - Code imports from .NET Core: System.Drawing.Printing,
    System.Security.Principal, WindowsFormsApplicationBase, parts of
    Microsoft.VisualBasic.Interaction
  - WMA and WMV support in FNA using mfplat.
  - Debug symbols available separately in PDB form.
  - Old VBNC compiler for Visual Basic .NET replaced with the VBC compiler from
    .NET Core.
  - Mono's JIT compiler generates code compatible with 64-bit macOS.
  - WPF built with support for media controls.
  - A replacement for the Managed DirectX API is included.
  - Fixes for various bugs that prevented most WPF applications from working.


*** Internationalization

- Unicode character tables are based on version 14.0.0 of the Unicode Standard.

- The timezone data is updated, based on the information from the Olson and
  Unicode CLDR databases.

- Codepages 720 (Arabic, Farsi and Urdu) and 20949 (Korean Wansung) are
  supported.

- The sr-Latn-RS locale is supported.

  
*** Kernel

- Launching applications with the 'wine' executable invokes start.exe for any
  unrecognized binary. This means that file associations work also from the
  Unix command line, e.g. 'wine foo.msi'.

- The low-level NtAlertThreadByThreadId / NtWaitForAlertByThreadId
  synchronization mechanism (roughly equivalent to Linux futexes) is supported,
  and used to implement the higher-level synchronization primitives.

- NT debug objects are implemented and used by the kernel debugger functions.

- The dynamic registry keys for performance data are implemented.


*** C runtime

- There's a full math library implementation in the C runtime, mostly imported
  from the Musl C library. The Unix math library is no longer used.

- The floating point environment functions are supported properly on all CPU
  platforms.


*** Internet and networking

- IE11 compatibility mode is improved and used by default for
  standard-compliant HTML documents.

- JScript EcmaScript compliant mode supports 'let' statements, Map object,
  object freezing, object sealing and mutable prototype chains.

- Gecko add-on MSI packages are installed into the prefix on demand, instead of
  during prefix update, to make updates faster and reduce disk space usage.

- The DTLS communication protocol is supported.

- The NSI device (Network Store Interface) is implemented, and used to provide
  higher-level network services in IpHlpAPI.

- The Windows Sockets support is reimplemented to go through NTDLL and the Afd
  device, following the Windows architecture.

- The various network database files (/etc/protocols, /etc/networks, etc.)  are
  provided and installed in the prefix. The equivalent Unix databases are no
  longer used for network queries.


*** Alternative platforms

- The new Apple Silicon Macs are supported, including running x86-64 binaries
  under Rosetta 2.

- GnuTLS is required on macOS for BCrypt and Secur32 support; the
  macOS-specific backend implementations have been removed.

- 32-bit ARM binaries are built in Thumb-2 mode, like on Windows.

- The preloader is also used on 32-bit ARM, for a more compatible address space
  layout.

- Stack unwinding is implemented on 32-bit ARM.

- More low-level system information queries like memory and battery status are
  supported on FreeBSD.


*** Builtin applications

- The REG registry tool supports operating on either the 32- or 64-bit view of
  the registry.

- The REG registry tool supports copying registry keys.

- The WineDump tool supports dumping Windows Metafiles, and shows more detailed
  information for CodeView records.

- The Wine Debugger (winedbg) supports debugging a 32-bit target process from
  the 64-bit debugger.


*** Development tools

- The IDL compiler (widl) supports loading type libraries embedded inside PE
  files.

- The IDL compiler searches for type libraries in the per-platform library
  search path instead of the include search path.

- The IDL compiler supports many more WinRT-specific constructs and attributes.


*** Build infrastructure

- All libraries are installed in architecture-specific directories, using names
  like 'i386-windows' for PE binaries, and 'x86_64-unix' for the Unix
  libraries. This enables supporting multiple architectures with a single Wine
  installation, as well as Winelib cross-compilation.

- Static (.a) import libraries are used on all platforms. Wine no longer
  generates the old-style .def libraries, though they are still supported for
  backwards compatibility.

- The option to prefer a native DLL by default is specified through a flag in
  the PE header, which can be set by passing the '--prefer-native option' to
  winebuild. The previous method, handling DLL_WINE_PREATTACH in DllMain, is no
  longer supported.

- The Dwarf debugging format is supported up to version 4. The Wine libraries
  are built with version 4 by default.

- Unique build identifiers can be stored in the binaries by passing the
  '--enable-build-id' option to configure.

- The Clang compiler in MSVC mode is supported.


*** Miscellaneous

- The Shell Folder naming is converted to use the Windows Vista+ scheme; for
  instance 'My Documents' becomes 'Documents', and most things are saved under
  the 'AppData' directory.

- The OpenCL library wrapper supports versions up to OpenCL 1.2.

- Paper forms are supported in various sizes in the WinSpool printer driver.

- There is initial support for MSDASQL, a Microsoft OLE DB provider for ODBC
  drivers.


*** External dependencies

- The following libraries are bundled in the source tree and built as PE
  libraries, so they are no longer required at the Unix level:
   - Faudio
   - GSM
   - LCMS2
   - LibJPEG
   - LibJXR
   - LibMPG123
   - LibPng
   - LibTiff
   - LibXml2
   - LibXslt
   - Zlib

- The libraries above can still be imported as external libraries instead of
  using the bundled copy, provided that they are available in PE format. This
  behavior is requested with the '--with-system-dllpath' configure option,
  which specifies the Unix search path for such dependencies.

- Direct3D 12 support now requires version 1.2 or later of the vkd3d library.
  Version 1.2 or later of the related vkd3d-shader library was already required
  by Wine 6.0 for translation of Direct3D shader to SPIR-V in the Vulkan
  renderer for the Direct3D implementation.

- The deprecated HAL library is no longer supported or needed.

- The macOS QuickTime library is no longer used.


--
Alexandre Julliard
julliard@winehq.org