Porting with Winelib

[Jeremy White]

Masahiko Hayashi wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I am looking into good way to port Windows applications 
> to Linux and hopefully any other Unixes.
> 
> I'd like to know about questions below.
> If anyone answer them, I'd appreciate it.
> 
> 
> 1. Can I use Winelib to port commercial application 
>      whose sources will be not disclosed ?


     Yes.


> 
> 2. Is it possible to link Winelib statically with an application and distribute it ?


     It is possible, but probably better to distribute shared object 
libraries - static linkage in Wine is broken at the moment.
However, I think the important point of your question is:
can we distribute our own version of Wine with our app,
and the answer is yes.


> 
> 3. In case that I don't use Winelib and use Wine instead 
>     to provide commercial application, 
>     can we include Wine with the application to distribute ?


     Yes


> 
> 4. Does porting with Winelib still need to compile MFC ? 
>     libmfc42.so still doesn't work ?


     Yes.  You can compile the MFC source.  It takes a bit
of doing, but can be done.  The winemaker tool is the key.


> 
> 5. Can Winelib deal with other languages besides English 
>      such as Japanese and German ?


     Yes.


> 
> 6. How is printing ? Can we print from ported application like Windows ?


     Yes.


> 
> 7. Is the license condition of Winelib is as same as the one of Wine ?


     Yes.


> 
> 8. It might be a problem compiling MFC on Linux and 
>     distributing it with an application 
>     because of MS's MFC license condition, right ? 
>     But there are companies have already ported their applications with Winelib. 
>     How did they avoid this type of problems ?


     Their are a range of versions of MFC; most of them allow 
redistribution of MFC.  For example, the most recent service pack
of Visual C++ 6 allows for this.


> 
> 9. Though I think I have read most of part in winehq.com and 
>     have checked newsgroups using groups.google.com, 
>     if there are good information about porting by Winelib I'd like to know.


     Probably the best source of information is the Winelib user
documentation.  There is a copy at
http://wine.codeweavers.com/docs/winelib-user
you can also find those same documents under the documentation directory
in the main Wine source tree.


> 
> 10. Is there good way to provide Help system 
>        with ported application like Widows Help ?


     There is a winhelp executable under the programs directory.
However, our customers generally prefer to switch to an alternate
style of help, such as HTML.


Jeremy White
CEO
CodeWeavers, Inc.