[Wine] Try wineprefixcreate to repair old .wine instead of deleting

Austin English austinenglish at gmail.com
Mon Mar 31 15:47:45 CDT 2008


On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 3:44 PM, Mark Knecht <markknecht at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 1:35 PM, Austin English <austinenglish at gmail.com> wrote:
>  >
>  > On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 3:24 PM, L. Rahyen <research at science.su> wrote:
>  >  > On Monday March 31 2008 19:08:47 Mark Knecht wrote:
>  >  >  > I wasn't even thinking of changing programs. Really I'm just thinking
>  >  >  > of users who haven't read the manuals or didn't get as far as one of
>  >  >  > thelast things on that list. wineprefixcreate seems about as developer
>  >  >  > like as one could possibly get. Just changing the name of
>  >  >  > wineprefixcreate to something like WineEnvBuilder or whatever
>  >  >
>  >  >         WineEnvBuilder is *very* bad name. It isn't descriptive (it's cryptic
>  >  >  for any newbie + it doesn't suggest that it also can update WINE prefix (not
>  >  >  only create one), and even worse: it even doesn't suggest that it is intended
>  >  >  for creating WINE prefixes), it will not be listed when you use Tab at the
>  >  >  command line when you already entered "wine", and it contain big letters.
>  >  >         Actually it doesn't matter a lot what is the name of wineprefixcreate. What
>  >  >  really does matter for most newbies is GUI to launch it when necessary (and
>  >  >  intuitive way to understand when this is necessary), or automatic launching
>  >  >  of wineprefixcreate if too old WINE prefix is detected (this is best option).
>  >  >         If you ask my opinion, wineprefixupdate would be better and more descriptive
>  >  >  name; and it is also good idea to add information that it can safely *update*
>  >  >  existing WINE prefix in output of "wineprefixcreate --help". But as I said
>  >  >  this is minor problems...
>  >  >         Currently as far as I know there is neither no simple GUI to use
>  >  >  wineprefixcreate for default or arbitrary WINE prefixes nor auto-run when
>  >  >  user have too old WINE prefix and this is exactly the problem.
>  >  >         It is also obvious that if we decide to silently auto-launch periodically
>  >  >  wineprefixcreate for existing WINE prefixes by default then it should be 100%
>  >  >  safe operation. Personally I almost never used it for updating existing WINE
>  >  >  prefixes so I don't know how safe it is currently.
>  >  >
>  >
>  >  Having read these threads on wine-devel/wine-users, it seems it looks
>  >  like a few things need to happen:
>  >
>  >  A) Quit telling people to $ rm -rf ~/.wine, and instead try $ wineprefixcreate
>  >  B) wineprefixcreate needs more thorough testing and bugs filed for any issues
>  >  C) Find some way of versioning wineprefixes, checking this when wine
>  >  is run, and either notifying the user their prefix may be out of date
>  >  or calling wineprefixcreate to update it before continuing
>  >  D) GUI wineprefixcreate some way (Possibly in winecfg?)
>  >
>  >  Comments? Is this the general consensus?
>  >
>
>  E) What to do the VERY first time you want to install a program or
>  before a new program is installed? Run wineprefixcreate before running
>  winecfg? Before installation?
>
>  To date if I am testing some app I basically blow away .wine in my
>  test account so that I don't pick up dlls and other things I've done
>  in the existing .wine directory. I figure that's required if anyone is
>  going to duplicate exactly what I've done. Basically, what's the best
>  way to get started?
>
>  The Wine HowTo page really doesn't say much about this. ("How to help
>  get applications working in Wine") It seems to assume previous
>  experience installing apps under Wine and just says check the AppDB
>  and join the mailing list. It would be great if we had a walk through
>  for folks but I've said this before.
>
>  - Mark
>

If ~/.wine doesn't exists when you run an app for the first time, the
prefix is automatically created. I.e.,
$ rm -rf ~/.wine
$ wine notepad

Note: This doesn't occur if you do:
$ rm -rf ~/test
$ WINEPREFIX=~/test wine notepad



More information about the wine-users mailing list