This is the general Wine FAQ.
For technical questions, visit the
Wine Troubleshooting Guide instead.
About this FAQ
Who maintains this FAQ ?
Dave Gardner maintained it from 1995-1998.
Douglas Ridgway (ridgway@winehq.com) took it over in 1999.
Andreas Mohr (amohr@codeweavers.com) converted it to FAQ-O-Matic in 2000.
Dimitrie O. Paun, Keith Matthews and Thomas Wickline reorganised it in 2002.
For suggestions/additions/complaints regarding this FAQ, please send an email to
wine-faq@winehq.org
What is the copyright on the FAQ ? And how may I use it ?
The original Wine FAQ, which this FAQ was based on, was copyright © 1995-1998 David Gardner.
It may be reproduced and modified under the same terms as Wine itself.
General Questions about Wine
What is Wine and what is it supposed to do ?
Wine is a program which allows the operation of DOS and MS
Windows programs (Windows 3.x and Win32 executables) on UNIX.
It consists of a program loader, which loads and executes a Windows
binary, and a library that implements Windows API calls using
their UNIX or X11 equivalents. The library may also be used
for porting Win32 code into native UNIX executables, often
without many changes in the source. Wine is free software,
and its license (contained in the file LICENSE
in each distribution) is LGPL style.
Is Wine an emulator?
Fortunately, no. Wine provides low-level binary compatibility,
but currently only for OSes running on Intel-compatible chips.
Are there any alternatives to Wine?
Yes, there are. You can use VMWare to run a Windows installation
inside a virtual machine, or use Win4Lin to run a specially
adapted Windows version on Linux. Both solutions cost money for
both the software itself and a Windows license.
Note that, like Wine, they can only use the hardware platform that
the target programs were originally compiled for (see below).
What is the difference between Wine and x86 hardware emulators?
There are two free x86 hardware emulators:
bochs, and
plex86
that allow use of hardware other than x86 to run x86 programs. Both
use the GPL. Bochs is older than plex86, seems to be easier to
install, but plex86 will run faster because plex86 uses a real
time binary compiler. The drawback of all emulators is that you
need a version of Windows in order to run Windows.
Why would anyone want Wine? Doesn't Windows suck?
First Wine is not about running Windows but about running Windows
applications.
So if all your computing needs are fulfilled by native Unix
applications, then you do not need Wine and should not be using
it. However, if you depend on one or more of the tens of
thousands of Windows applications, then Wine is the best way to
use it without giving up on Unix. Let's look at the alternatives
to see why:
The most obvious alternative is to dual-boot. This is the solution
that provides the best compatibility. However it requires that you
acquire a Windows license and then dedicate a good chunk of your
hard-drive to Windows. But the worst is yet to come. Each time you
will want to use that application you will have to reboot to
Windows. This is especially significant if external factors dictate
when you must use this application (e.g. credit card to process,
email to retrieve from a Lotus Notes server). Then you will find
yourself forced to close all your Linux applications just to run
that one Windows application. You may quickly get tired of this, or
will find that such a situation is impossible to justify in a
business environment.
The next solution is to install virtual machine emulation software
such as VMWare, Win4Lin or Plex86. Then you can use windows
applications without suffering such a big disruption. But it still
requires that you acquire a Windows license and dedicate as much
disk space to Windows. Furthermore you will pay for the added
convenience: if using VMWare or Win4Lin you have to buy another
license, and more importantly you now have to dedicate a good chunk
of your computer's memory to the virtual machine. Performance will
take a significant hit too.
Using Wine lets you avoid all of that overhead: Windows license,
hard-drive space required by Windows, memory and performance hit
taken by emulated virtual machines. Now you can start your Windows
application straight from your regular desktop environment, place
that application's window side by side with native application
windows, copy/paste from one to the other, and run it all at full speed.
It is also a pretty vital part of migrating a large organisation,
you can't change a 5000 desktop setup overnight without a lot of risk.
Which one of the different Wine packages out there is good for me?
Currently there is a broad selection of different Wine packages/versions:
Wine
This is the "standard" source distribution of Wine. Its license is
LGPL, it can be downloaded for free.
ReWine
This is a forked Wine tree that got created when Wine changed its
license from X11 to the more restrictive LGPL, in order to let
people continue to maintain an X11 licensed Wine version. Its
license is X11, it can be downloaded for free.
Transgaming's WineX
This is TransGaming's Wine version specially suited for games.
It includes Direct3D support (thus its DirectX support is much
more complete than Wine's) and copyprotection support. Its license
is AFPL, the source distribution can be downloaded for free, but
the binary pack ages that include copy protection support and good
support are only for subscribed customers ($5/month).
Codeweavers' Wine preview
This is a specially packaged and more stable/older version of Wine
which has a nice setup for easy installation. License X11, free
download.
Codeweavers' Crossover Plugin
Special Wine installation to be used for running win32 browser
plugins such as e.g. Quicktime in Linux browsers. Costs $24.95.
Well worth it (very stable and useful packaging).
Codeweavers' Crossover Office
Wine version with special packaging to make sure almost all
important Office type programs work pretty well. Costs $54.95.
Seems to be well worth it so far according to some comments.
(note: you're supporting a company actively contributing to wine
if you decide to buy either Plugin or Office.
Other packaged versions of Wine
Various wine packages can be downloaded for free, to be found at
Wine HQ. They're not officially packaged by Wine HQ, and as such
may have some configuration inconsistencies.
What's the history of Wine?
The Wine project started in 1993 as a way to support running Windows 3.1
programs on Linux. Bob Amstadt was the original coordinator, but turned
it over fairly early on to Alexandre Julliard, who has run it ever
since. A newsgroup
was created in July 1994. Over the years, ports for
other Unixes have been added, along with support for Win32 as Win32
applications became popular.
For more information, see
http://www.winehq.com/about.shtml
What is the current version of Wine?
A new version of Wine is distributed about every month. You will be
able to keep up on all the latest releases by reading the newsgroup
comp.emulators.ms-windows.wine, or by visiting the
Wine HQ homepage. When
downloading Wine from your FTP site of choice (see
the Download page
for some of these choices), you can make sure that you are getting
the latest version by watching the version numbers in the distribution
filename. For instance, the distribution released on October 31, 2002
was called Wine-20021031.tar.gz. Patch files are also available. If
you are current to the previous version, you can download and apply
just the current patch file rather than the entire new distribution.
The patch filenames follow the same conventions as the monthly
distribution.
Read-only CVS access is also available.
What is the current Status of Wine?
As of mid 2002, Wine consists of over 1 million lines of C code,
written by more than 300 developers from dozens of countries around
the world. Wine is in active use by an estimated 100K people. Wine
implements more than 90% of the calls in popular Windows
specifications such as ECMA-234 and Open32.
You may also want to look at the
Status page for a global view on Wine's implementation progress.
When will Wine be finished?
Large software projects are never finished, only released. In any
case Wine is chasing a moving target since every new release of
Windows contains new API calls or variations to the existing ones.
Because Wine is being developed by volunteers, it is difficult to
predict when it will be ready for general release. But due to the
much increased interest by companies in porting apps via Wine, Wine
development is constantly getting more and more active. Right now
we are working on releasing Wine 0.9 during 2003
Who's responsible for Wine?
Wine is available thanks to the work of many people. Please see the
AUTHORS
file in the distribution for the complete list. Some companies that
are or have been involved with Wine development are Codeweavers,
TransGaming, Corel, and Macadamian.
Who are the folks and organizations who have contributed money or equipment to the Wine project?
People and organizations who have given generous contributions of
money, equipment, or licenses, include:
David L. Harper
Bob Hepple
Mark A. Horton
Kevin P. Lawton
The Syntropy Institute
James Woulfe
VMWare Inc.
(http://www.vmware.com)
Corel
(http://linux.corel.com)
What undocumented APIs / interfaces are not understood? Would
seeing Microsoft source help?
The best would be if the Windows API was fully documented, so Wine
could be a perfect "clean-room" implementation. Seeing the source
code might make it harder to prove that no copyright violations have
taken place. That said, the documentation is often bad, nonexistent,
and even misleading where it exists, so a fair amount of reverse
engineering have been necessary, particularly in the shell (Explorer)
interface.
Is TransGaming's latest patch included in the standard Wine release?
No, it's not.
TransGaming make money via a subscription service. Thus they
submitted their DirectDraw and some DirectSound work, but they will
not submit their OpenGL wrapper based Direct3D support.
Will there be a Windows version of Wine?
Some people are working on getting Wine code to compile on Windows.
Cygwin
(http://www.cygwin.com/)
Reactos
(http://www.reactos.com/)
There's some progress, so a Wine version that's usable on Windows
might be available at some time.
What do I need in order to use Wine?
Under what hardware platform(s) and operating system(s) will
Wine(Lib) run?
Wine is being developed specifically to run on the Intel x86 class
of CPUs under certain UNIXes that run on the x86 platform.
NetBSD, OpenBSD, Unixware, and SCO OpenServer 5 worked at one time,
but Wine now requires kernel-level threads which are not currently
available (or understood by the Wine team) in those platforms.
The Wine development team hopes to attract the interest of other
commercial UNIX and UNIX clone vendors as well.
BeOS: porting efforts used to be pretty strong, but BeOS has severe
limitations in Unix call support, so a port will probably never
happen.
FreeBSD: Should work, with limitations in specific areas (mainly
missing device/hardware support)
Linux/x86: WORKS. If it doesn't, You may also want to see the
Wine
Troubleshooting Guide
What minimum CPU must I have in my computer to be able to run Wine
and MS Windows applications smoothly?
We need to differentiate between Wine and Winelib here.
Wine won't run on any x86 CPU less than an 80386 due to address
management limitations
It is known to also work in the 80486 and upwards compatible CPUs.
The basic test is, if you can run X11 now, you should be able to run
Wine and MS Windows applications under it.
As always, the faster your CPU, the better. Having a math coprocessor
is unimportant. However, having a graphics accelerated video card
supported by X will help greatly
Depending on your application you may find that faster speeds are
required for sensible use. We can't give specific advice on that due
to the vast range of applications out there.
How much disk space will the Wine source code and binaries take on my
hard drive?
You need approximately 250 megabytes of free hard drive space to
store and compile the source code. Wine also needs about 18 megs in
your /tmp directory. And about 50 MB are needed to do a make install.
What other software do I need to have installed to compile and run
Wine?
Many development tools need to be installed in order to compile Wine.
A list of required packages for several distributions is included in
the README
(http://www.winehq.com/source/README).
To run Wine, you will need the following:
The compiled Wine binary
A properly configured wine.conf file (or ~/.winerc file)
An installed and working X Window system
Some Windows programs to test
How much RAM do I need to have on my UNIX system to be able to run
Wine and MS Windows applications smoothly?
If you can run X smoothly on your UNIX system now, you should be
able to run Wine and MS Windows applications just fine too, depending
on how memory hungry the application is.
A Wine workstation will work with 16 megabytes of RAM and a 16
megabyte swap partition as long as you have a reasonable graphics
card. Most applications will run reasonably with 64/64 Mb,
interactive games are likely to need more. You can run Wine with 8/8,
but it is going to be unusably slow and very constraining on the
applications you can run. If you wish to be part of the development
team and program Wine itself, be aware that the debugger is rather
memory intensive. Some have suggested that 64 megabytes is the
minimum RAM needed for Wine development, although some are able to
work (albeit slowly) with 24 megabytes of physical RAM and lots of
swap space.
How long does Wine take to build
Wine is getting to be quite large, and building from scratch takes a
lot of processing. As of September 2002, compile times were around 20
minutes on an Athlon 1200 with 640 Mb and 45-50 minutes on a Cyrix
300 with 64 Mb. If you have a CVS copy, you may not need to rebuild
the whole thing every time you update.
I have a Drivespaced, Doublespaced or Stackered DOS partition. Can
Wine run MS Windows binaries located in such a partition?
Yes, but only if the operating system supports mounting those types
of drives.There is a Linux file system driver called dmsdos that will
allow read/write access through Doublespaced and Drivespace 1.0
drives. More specifically, it supports mounting DOS 6.0 and 6.2
Doublespaced, DOS 6.22 Drivespaced, and Windows 95 Doublespaced
compressed partitions (read and write access works fine, but write
access is slow). It can be found at
ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/file systems/dosfs/
Do I need to have a DOS partition on my system to use Wine?
You do not need a licensed and installed copy of DOS or MS Windows to
install, configure and run Wine. However, Wine has to be able to
'see' an MS Windows binary (i.e. application) if it is to run it.
Does MS Windows need to be loaded into that partition in order to
run MS Windows programs under Wine?
Many folks have successfully installed and run some small programs
in their UNIX filesystem without having a DOS partition or MS
Windows. However, in many cases you need a directory and file
infrastructure that is similar to an existing Windows installation.
Some applications' installation programs want to distribute some of
the package's files into the /windows and /windows/system
directories in order to run, and unless these exist on your UNIX
file system, those programs will not install correctly and probably
will not run well, if at all.
If you have a DOS partition with MS Windows installed in it, make
sure that your UNIX system can 'see' this partition (check your
/etc/fstab file or mount the partition manually) so that Wine can
run the MS Windows binaries located in the DOS partition. To run
without a DOS partition, you need to set a UNIX path to be your
drive C, and make sure that the /windows and /windows/system
directories point to some place that actually exist.
Here's an example, copied from a machine which has no DOS partition
but successfully runs Wine:
[Drive C]
Path=/var/lib/wine
Type=hd
Label=MS-DOS
Filesystem=win95
[wine]
Windows=c:\windows
System=c:\windows\system
Temp=e:\
Path=c:\windows;c:\windows\system;c:
In /var/lib/wine/windows, you will need to
install a win.ini config file that you might
find on a typical MS Windows 3.1 machine. The directory
/var/lib/wine/windows/system should exist, but
doesn't need to contain anything. However, to use MS DLLs, you can
copy them into that directory. Note that this is a contravention of
the Windows licence unless Windows is properly installed on the
machine. If you have DOS/MS Windows installed on your system, you can
mount that partition at bootup by modifying the file
/etc/fstab in your UNIX partition (assuming that
the UNIX kernel supports the DOS/MS Windows filesystem type).
If you edit this file by hand, it should contain something similar
to the following:
/dev/hda1 /dosc msdos uid=0,gid=100,umask=007 0 0
This will allow you to read and write to the DOS partition without
being root.
If Wine completely replaces MS Windows, will it duplicate all of the
functions of MS Windows?
Most of them, yes. However, some applications and applets that come
with MS Windows, such as File Manager and Calculator, can be
considered by some to be redundant, since 32-bit UNIX programs that
duplicate these applets' functions already exist.
Will I be able to install MS Windows applications in any flavor of a
UNIX file system?
Wine is written to be file system independent, so MS Windows
applications will install and run under virtually any file system
supported by your brand of UNIX.
Will Wine run only under X, or can it run in character mode?
Most of Wine's development effort is geared against MS Windows' GUI,
but some limited support for character mode has appeared, by setting
GraphicsDriver=ttydrv in wine.conf's
[wine] section.
Wine's infrastructure is already somewhat prepared for supporting
other graphics drivers than x11drv, but no real "alternative"
graphics driver has been used yet.
Will Wine run under any X window manager? Does it require a window manager at all?
Wine is window manager independent, so the X window manager you
choose to run has (almost) no bearing on your ability to run MS
Windows programs under Wine. Wine uses standard X libraries, so no
additional ones are needed. Wine has its own window management,
which acts like MS Windows. It can be turned off to use the native
window manager by modifying Managed or Desktop settings as described
in man wine.conf.
Will 32-bit Windows 95/98 applications run under Wine?
Yes, 32-bit programs are now about as well supported as 16-bit
programs.
Getting Wine
Where can I get Wine?
Because of lags created by using mirror, word of this newest release
may reach you before the release is actually available at the ftp
sites listed here. The sources are available from the following
locations:
http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/ALPHA/wine/development/
ftp://ftp.infomagic.com/pub/mirrors/linux/sunsite/ALPHA/wine/development/
ftp://ftp.fu-berlin.de/unix/linux/mirrors/sunsite.unc.edu/ALPHA/wine/development/
ftp://orcus.progsoc.uts.edu.au/pub/Wine/development/
It should also be available from any other site that mirrors
ibiblio.org. For more download locations, see
lycos Some of
these ftp sites may archive previous versions of Wine as well as the
current one. To determine which is the latest one, look at the
distribution file name, which will take the form
Wine-YYYYMMDD.tar.gz. Simply replace YYYYMMDD in the distribution
file name with the numbers for year, month and date, respectively.
The latest one is the one to get.
Wine binary packages are available for several OS'es and
distributions. See
the download page for the most recent list.
Is there a CVS tree?
Current Wine sources are also available via anonymous client/server
CVS. You will need CVS 1.9 or above. If you are coming from behind a
firewall, you will either need a hole in the firewall for the CVS
port (2401) or use SOCKS.
To login to the CVS tree, do
export CVSROOT=:pserver:cvs@cvs.winehq.com/home/wine
cvs login
Use "cvs" as the password (without the quotes). Note that
/home/wine is a path on the server, not on your
machine. To check out the entire Wine source tree (which may be
slow), use
cvs -z 3 checkout wine
or if you just want a subtree, or individual file, you can do that
too with
cvs -z 3 checkout wine/ANNOUNCE
Be aware, though, that getting the entire Wine source tree via CVS
is pretty slow, especially compared to getting Wine from an FTP
mirror near you. For a CVS mirror list, see
http://www.winehq.com/dev.shtml
Patch files are also available, so that you don't have to download,
install, and configure the entire distribution each week if you are
current to the previous release. Patch file release names follow the
same numbering convention as do the general releases, and take the
form
Wine-YYYYMMDD.diff.gz
Patch files are available from the same sites that distribute the
full release. To upgrade to a new release by using a patch file,
first cd to the top-level directory of the release (the one
containing the README file), then do a "make clean", and patch the
release with
gunzip -c patch-file | patch -p1
where patch-file is the name of the patch file something like
Wine-YYYYMMDD.diff.gz. You can then re-run ./configure, and then run
make depend && make
If you are mirroring the Wine distribution from the tsx-11 site and
wish to be listed here in this FAQ, please add it to the
"things to go into the documentation" area.
Can I get Wine using cvsup?
The CVS mirrors don't offer cvsup support yet, but the main server
does. Use a wine.sup file of:
*default host=cvs.winehq.com
*default base=/cvs
*default prefix=/cvs/wine
*default release=wine
*default delete
# If your network link is a T1 or faster, comment out the following line.
#*default compress
*default use-rel-suffix
wine
Installing And Configuring Wine
How do I compile the Wine distribution source code?
See the README (
http://www.winehq.com/source/README) for instructions.
Additionally, you may want to set the TMPDIR
environment variable TMPDIR=~/tmp or
TMPDIR=/tmp (if you are root).
How do I install Windows in Wine under Linux?
Simple answer: you CAN'T. Windows demands direct access to the
hardware and cannot get it with Wine and UNIX in the way
Wine is supposed to be used WITHOUT Windows primarily. If you want
to use a Windows installation, then use an existing installation
alongside the UNIX installation (see the dual-boot HOWTO for your OS
for more details). Or alternatively use the cabextract utility to
extract Windows install archives to a directory that you want to use
as Wine's Windows tree.
How do I configure Wine to run on my system?
Wine requires that you have a config file as
~/.wine/config. The format of this file is
explained in the wine.conf man page. The file
documentation/samples/config (
http://www.winehq.com/source/documentation/samples/config)
contains a config file example. More explicit directions can be
found in the README file (
http://www.winehq.com/source/README) that will be located in
the base Wine directory after you gunzip and untar the distribution
file.
If I want to use a Windows install, which versions are OK?
Either use a classic no-windows install (Wine is getter better all
the time) or use a Win9x install (Win95, 98, 98SE, ME). DON'T
configure Wine to use an NT-based Windows install (NT, Win2K, WinXP).
If I use a Windows install with Wine, which one works best?
As of 02/2002:
I'd say Win98SE is the best version to use with Wine, as it's fairly
widespread amongst developers and relatively old. Using Win2K files
is definitely worse than a plain no-windows
Wine install, and Win ME is said to be problematic, too (as probably
no developer uses it). In short: all Win9x <= W98SE are good.
Installing applications generated by Visual Basic won't run. What
should I do?
Make sure you have all the VB runtime libraries installed. You may
need to use the native dll vbrun60.dll
When I click on *.exe file in my file Manager, nothing happens
The normal Wine releases don't have .exe extensions registered for
Wine in KDE/Gnome yet. You have to open a terminal window instead
(often an icon showing a "black screen") and type something like:
cd /my/windows/program/directory
wine myprogram.exe
Or alternatively you could download the CodeWeavers Wine preview
which includes .exe extension registration for KDE/Gnome and a nice
setup program.
bash "wine: Command not found" What can I do?
Try to relogin into bash. That might fix it.
If it doesn't, then make sure the wine binary is in your
PATH.
Run as root:
find / -name "wine" -type f -perm +111
to find the path where the wine binary is in. Then check whether
PATH includes it:
echo $PATH
If not, add that e.g. to /etc/profile by doing:
export PATH=$PATH:/path/to/wine/binary
That should help.
If you used a package manager (rpm or
apt) - Verify your packages. The package
winesetuptk.rpm is only a front-end for
making a meaningfull config file, it DOES NOT install the wine
package...
For complete packages, use
www.rpmfind.net or the
Download section.
How do I remove Wine from my Computer?
All you have to do is to type:
rm -fR \[/path/\]Wine*
Make sure that you specify the exact path when using the powerful
rm -fR command. If you are afraid that you might
delete something important, or might otherwise delete other files
within your filesystem, cd into each Wine
subdirectory singly and delete the files found there manually,
one file or directory at a time.
Neither the Wine developers and programmers, nor the Wine FAQ
author/maintainer, can be held responsible for your deleting any
files in your own filesystem.
About running Wine
In case of problems when running Wine, You may also want to see the
Wine Troubleshooting Guide.
How do I run an MS Windows program under Wine?
When invoking Wine, you must specify the entire path to the
executable, or by filename only. For example to run Windows'
solitaire, type any of the following:
wine sol or wine sol.exe
(using the search path to locate the file).
wine c:\\windows\\sol.exe
(using a DOS filename).
wine /usr/windows/sol.exe
(using a UNIX filename).
wine "c:\windows\sol.exe"
(using quoted DOS filename).
The path of the file will also be added to the path when a full name
is supplied on the command line.
I have installed and configured Wine, but Wine cannot find MS
Windows on my drive. Where did I go wrong?
If you have a DOS partition, first make sure that you have mounted
it, either by putting the entry into /etc/fstab,
or by manually mounting it.
Remember too that unless your version of UNIX can see through it, or
you are running a utility that can see through it, your DOS
partition must not be located on a Drivespaced, Doublespaced or
Stackered partition, as neither Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD or Wine can
natively 'see' files located in these compressed DOS partitions.
Check your path statements in the wine.conf
file. No capital letters may be used in paths, as they are
automatically converted to lowercase.
I was able to get various MS Windows programs to run, but parts of
them do not work. What is wrong?
Wine is not complete at this time, so some of each programs'
features may not work. They will in time as more of the MS
Windows API calls are included in Wine.
Kill the xterm shell window that you called up to run your MS
Windows program, and the X window that appeared with the program
will be killed too.
Can I use Wine with SuSe, Peanut or other Linux Distro's?
You can use Wine on any sufficiently recent Linux installation. The
amount of work getting Wine up and running depends on whether there
are proper packages available or a source compile has to be done.
Does Wine work with AMD Processors?
Yes, it does.
Can I launch a Unix program from a Windows program?
Sure, Wine supports that. Just enter the unix program name wherever
a program has something that it's supposed to execute,and then it
should just work.
Getting help
Is there any documentation for Wine?
Yes, see
http://www.winehq.com/support.shtml.
I couldn't find the answer to my question in the documentation, but
I've written a document explaining how to solve it. What should I do?
Updates and additions to the Wine documentation directory should be
sent to the wine-patches mailing list at
http://www.winehq.com/dev.shtml#ml. Website and FAQ
additions should be added to the appropriate Wine Knowledgebase
directory.
Is there a Usenet newsgroup for Wine?
Yes, and it's called
comp.emulators.ms-windows.wine. The newsgroup serves as a
place for users and developers to discuss Wine, and for minor
announcements for the general public. Major announcements will be
crossposted to other appropriate newsgroups, such as the following:
comp.os.linux.announce
comp.windows.x.announce
comp.emulators.announce
If your Usenet site does not carry these newsgroups, please urge
your ISP's sysadmin to add and/or uplink them.
Is there a World Wide Web site for Wine?
Wine HQ (
http://www.winehq.com) is the official site.
Is there an IRC channel for Wine?
Sure. It's channel #WineHQ on
irc.openprojects.net see
(
http://openprojects.nu/services/irc.html). Usually several
Wine developers hang out there just to help YOU ;-)
I think I've found a bug. How do I report this bug to the Wine
programming team?
Bug reports should be submitted to our online Bugzilla system
(
http://bugs.winehq.com/). You should include at least the
following:
The Wine version tested
The MS Windows program name and, if possible, the version number
of the software tested
A brief description of the bug
The relevant part(s) of the output of the Wine debugger
A screenshot of the visual problem, if applicable
For more information about reporting bugs please see the
How to report a bug section of the Wine Users Guide.
Helping Wine or becoming a Wine developer
How do I become a Wine developer? What do I need to know?
If you can program C, that's a good start. Download the sources via
CVS, subscribe to the mailing lists, look around the source, and pay
attention to the comp.emulators.ms-windows.wine newsgroup and the
mailing lists (
http://www.winehq.com/dev.shtml#ml). See if there's anything
that you think you can fix or work on. You won't have much trouble
finding areas that need work in Wine (grep for FIXMEs in the source).
How can I help contribute to the Wine project, and in what way(s)?
You can contribute programming or documentation skills, or monetary
or equipment donations, to aid the Wine developers in reaching their
goals.
For a list of ideas of how you can help, please consult the
Wine contrib page.
I want to help beta test Wine. How can I do this?
Wine still consists of some Alpha code at this time. However, anyone
is welcome to download the latest version, and try it out at any
time.
I have written some code that I would like to submit to the Wine
project. How do I go about doing this?
Patches are greatly appreciated and should be submitted to the
wine-patches mailing list
(
http://www.winehq.com/dev.shtml#ml). Also see this page for
a description of what happens to submitted patches.
Developing programs using Wine/WineLib
Can I use Wine to port my Win32 sources to Unix?
That is the idea of Winelib. Right now you may still have some
difficulties, but this is changing all the time. Read the
Winelib User's Guide for info.
Will MFC work with Wine? What do I need to do?
Wine is not implementing an MFC replacement nor does it intend to.
However it is possible (with a lot of work) to compile the MFC from
source and thus produce an mfc42.dll.so library.
Please refer to the
Winelib User's Guide for how to do this.
Are there any commercial applications which have been ported
using Wine?
A few examples of applications using Winelib:
Corel's WordPerfect Office Suite
(
http://linux.corel.com/products/wpo2000_linux/index.htm)
Deneba's Canvas 7
(
http://www.deneba.com/dazroot/softlibs/cv7_linux/default.html)
IBM's Websphere
(
http://www7b.boulder.ibm.com/dl/swws/swwsgddb-p)
Many other important applications have already been ported. (we are
speaking of several top 500 applications here)
How can I detect Wine?
You really shouldn't want to do this. If there's a quirk in Wine
you need to work around, it's much better to fix it in Wine (after
all you're a developer, so you should be able to gather enough help
and knowledge to fix it for real).
Wine HQ issues
Why are the maillists set to reply to author, not to mailing list?
There are very valid reasons for doing so.
How to unsubscribe from the mailing lists?
Please see:
http://www.winehq.org/development/#ml