AppDB: Rating / Patching

[Ben Klein]

2009/1/22 Paul TBBle Hampson <Paul.Hampson at pobox.com>:
> On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 06:34:14PM +0100, Francois Gouget wrote:
>> On Wed, 21 Jan 2009, Paul TBBle Hampson wrote:
>> [...]
>>> What about apps that fail to include a necessary third-party library?
>
>>> If I understand the AppDB comments and followed the IRC discussion
>>> correctly, Warcraft 3's latest patch (1.22) was built with a newer
>>> Visual Studio and so requires new Visual C runtimes, while previous
>>> versions did not. And the patcher doesn't install these runtimes.
>
>> If you don't need to manually install the third-party library on a stock
>> installation of the application's officially supported Windows platform
>> (e.g. Wow on Windows XP), then you should not need to manually install
>> it in Wine. If you do, then that application cannot be rated platinum.
>
> True, but not the point I'm talking about.
>
> On a stock install of Windows XP, you'd have to go get the runtimes and
> install them, same as under a stock Wine prefix.
>
> On a well-used Windows XP install, you most likely already have the
> Visual Studio 7 runtimes installed, so won't notice the flaw in the
> installer. Same as under a well-used Wine prefix.
>
> To my mind, this shouldn't prevent the application being rated platinum.
>
> The maintainer of Warcraft 3 rather feels that until Wine implements the
> Visual Studio 7 runtime libraries as builtins, Warcraft 3 cannot be
> rated platinum.

Perhaps this argument can be summarised thusly: If
1. the required libraries are not intended to be a part of Wine (e.g.,
obscure 3rd-party runtimes) at any time in the future, and
2. the application requiring the libraries does not correctly ship the
runtime libraries, then
C. the requirement of native versions of the libraries separate from
an application's installer should not impede an application from being
rated "Platinum".

So in the case of Warcraft 3 (or WoW, or whatever we're talking about
now), we've established that #2 is true for the patch (the patch does
not ship with the VC7 runtime, required to run the game after
patching). Perhaps the question remains, is a VC7 runtime library
intended to be developed and shipped with Wine? I don't think this is
the case.

What it boils down to is expected behaviour. Is it expected that the
patched game should fail, due to missing VC7 runtime, on a regular
Windows system (assuming no other software has installed VC7 runtime
already)? If so, then it is in fact working correctly, and perhaps
does deserve a "Platinum" rating.