Custom Windows Program Loader

[Steven Edwards]

Hi,

On 10/29/05, Mike McCormack <mike at codeweavers.com> wrote:
> "You can make a dummy file in your application directory called
> application.exe.local to force Windows to use the dlls in the local
> directory. So say you have IEXPLORE.EXE you would create
> IEXPLORE.EXE.LOCAL and drop the Mingw compiled dlls in to the
> application folder and see how it runs."

Just a added note if anyone wants to work on this before Wine 1.0 it
would be nice because it would mean users could do without some
dlloverrides for certain installers. I think the logic is not too
complex and Julliard was going to try to implement it but if anyone
one else wants to it would be cool. He has enough things on his plate.
Basicly in the loader at the end of all of the logic for KnownDlls and
the DllSearchPath you check if there is a *.exe.local and it takes
priority.

IE5 Setup and certain versions of iTunes use the trick though now that
Windows has side-by-side assemblies DllHell is mostly a thing of the
past so they don't really use this trick anymore. If you manually
extract some versions of the IE installer you will see a dummy
exe.local copy of the IE setup wizard. I think this was needed because
of version conflicts with the local advpack and wininet on certain
verisons of windows.

Thanks
Steven