[Bug 49923] Wineconsole curses backend support was removed.

[WineHQ Bugzilla]

https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=49923

--- Comment #9 from ttallink at googlemail.com ---
I'll explain, in great detail, my problem again:

wineconsole is still broken for me - granted, I did not try 5.19 due to the
nature of my servers (that is, thousands of users being connected at once, any
reboot means a forced disconnect and distress to my users so I try to avoid it
until it's absolutely necessary, i.e. necessary security updates and the
likes).

To add some clarification:

My application, a 12kb sized Windows PE binary, has been compiled in a way so
that it does not open any windows or console (-mwindows compiler directive,
using GCC 8.1 from mingw-w64), it silently runs in the background, waiting for
connections from users using the Winsock API.

This is the systemd unit file used to launch the service:

[Unit]
Description=*redacted*
After=syslog.target network.target nss-lookup.target

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/bin/wineconsole --backend=curses /*redacted*/*redacted*.exe
WorkingDirectory=/*redacted*
User=*redacted*
Group=users
Environment=TERM=dumb
StandardInput=tty-force
TTYPath=/dev/pts/ptmx
KillSignal=SIGINT

[Install]
WantedBy = multi-user.target

You can see that I am attaching the /dev/pts/ptmx pseudo-terminal in order to
make the curses backend happy - any output written to that terminal is of
course discarded, but since there is no output in the first place, this was a
nice work-around in order to make wineconsole work through systemd without
having a 99% CPU usage after starting the service (other, unrelated bug).

Now, that the curses backend was removed, the option to use wineconsole through
a systemd service with a pseudo-terminal attached has vanished - it now
requires a fully fledged desktop environment along with a display (or so it
seems).

Is this wanted behavior?

In my opinion, definitely not - there should be a way to run wineconsole as a
service, without any desktop environment, X Server or displays available -
however, since Wine 5.18, and the removal of the curses backend, this is no
longer possible - only option for me and others is to stay on 5.17 indefinitely
, however, I would still like to receive security and optional updates for
Wine.

Please consider working around this issue by making wineconsole not require a
desktop session / display, optionally only if some certain command line is
passed, so we can run it as a service with a pseudo terminal attached.

If anyone has any ideas on how to get this service running on Wine 5.18 or
later, on a remote server with no graphics hardware, desktop environment or X
Server, then please enlighten me, I'd be truly grateful.

Yours truly,
William

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