This document provides a few tips on porting Wine to your favorite (UNIX-based) operating system. Operating systems change. Maybe yours doesn't have the foo.h header, but maybe a future version will have it. If you want to #include <foo.h>, it doesn't matter what operating system you are using; it only matters whether foo.h is there. Furthermore, operating systems change names or "fork" into several ones. An #ifdef MyOs will break over time. If you use the feature of autoconf -- the Gnu auto-configuration utility -- wisely, you will help future porters automatically because your changes will test for features, not names of operating systems. A feature can be many things: existence of a header file existence of a library function existence of libraries bugs in header files, library functions, the compiler, ... You will need Gnu Autoconf, which you can get from your friendly Gnu mirror. This program takes Wine's configure.ac file and produces a configure shell script that users use to configure Wine to their system. There are exceptions to the "avoid #ifdef MyOS" rule. Wine, for example, needs the internals of the signal stack -- that cannot easily be described in terms of features. Moreover, you can not use autoconf's HAVE_* symbols in Wine's headers, as these may be used by Winelib users who may not be using a configure script. Let's now turn to specific porting problems and how to solve them. This first step is to make autoconf check for this header. In configure.in you add a segment like this in the section that checks for header files (search for "header files"): AC_CHECK_HEADER(foo.h, AC_DEFINE(HAVE_FOO_H)) If your operating system supports a header file with the same contents but a different name, say bar.h, add a check for that also. Now you can change #include <foo.h> to #ifdef HAVE_FOO_H #include <foo.h> #elif defined (HAVE_BAR_H) #include <bar.h> #endif If your system doesn't have a corresponding header file even though it has the library functions being used, you might have to add an #else section to the conditional. Avoid this if you can. You will also need to add #undef HAVE_FOO_H (etc.) to include/config.h.in Finish up with make configure and ./configure. A typical example of this is the memmove function. To solve this problem you would add memmove to the list of functions that autoconf checks for. In configure.in you search for AC_CHECK_FUNCS and add memmove. (You will notice that someone already did this for this particular function.) Secondly, you will also need to add #undef HAVE_BAR to include/config.h.in The next step depends on the nature of the missing function. Case 1: It's easy to write a complete implementation of the function. (memmove belongs to this case.) You add your implementation in misc/port.c surrounded by #ifndef HAVE_MEMMOVE and #endif. You might have to add a prototype for your function. If so, include/miscemu.h might be the place. Don't forget to protect that definition by #ifndef HAVE_MEMMOVE and #endif also! Case 2: A general implementation is hard, but Wine is only using a special case. An example is the various wait calls used in SIGNAL_child from loader/signal.c. Here we have a multi-branch case on features: #ifdef HAVE_THIS ... #elif defined (HAVE_THAT) ... #elif defined (HAVE_SOMETHING_ELSE) ... #endif Note that this is very different from testing on operating systems. If a new version of your operating systems comes out and adds a new function, this code will magically start using it. Finish up with make configure and ./configure.