Wine with .NET?

Fredrick P. Lackey fred.lackey at marbellasoftware.com
Sun Nov 17 17:37:28 CST 2002


Greg / Mark,

First of all, thanks for the info.  And, yes, I think you are correct.
I may need to clarify who/where I am.

As far as me being a "Microsoft developer," I am a senior-level
developer with about 21 years of experience.  I've helped some of the
Microsoft teams in development of different pieces here and there, but I
do not work for Microsoft any longer.  My largest contribution was
playing a part in the development of the backup utilities (aka "Backup
Exec" by Seagate/Arcada Software).

Where I am at the moment is a crossroads.  I own a company focused on
rapid development on a Microsoft platform (essentially, we build
components to simplify complex tasks for developers working on a M$
system).  Unfortunately, I'm getting pretty sick of the OS and M$ as a
whole.  Their systems are becoming increasingly bloated and complex, yet
the benefit they provide hasn't changed much in many years.
Unfortunately, again, Microsoft technologies pay the bills.

So, in short, I would like to be able to create a development
environment that would allow me to produce applications on a Linux
platform using the skills that I already have (or with as little of a
learning curve as possible) while still being able to maintain and
develop code geared towards a Microsoft platform.  Additionally, I would
really like to NOT spend a butt load of money purchasing additional
software for my new Linux box since most of my decisions will be based
out of pure ignorance.  Not that I want something for nothing, but I
would like to be able to make knowledgeable decisions before I do invest
any real money.

Enter the Wine project...

My ultimate goal is to scrap my Windows XP Pro laptop and install Red
Hat v8.0 using Wine for those things that I might need to run from a
Windows world.  I have recently posted a few questions in various
newsgroups asking for input from Linux web developers regarding their
preferred development environment (languages, editors, databases, web
servers, daemons, any worthwhile tools, etc.).  To be completely honest,
I knew I was pushing when I asked for the Visual Studio IDE to run with
Wine, however, that just goes to show how serious I am to scrap my
dependency on the M$ products as a whole.  And, even if it DID work, I
would still need a clean Win32 OS running somewhere to be able to
compile and package any applications.

Which brings me to my next question...

I have been able to successfully install and run some basic Windows
specific applications (Trillian, WinZip, etc.), but I've run into some
strange issues when trying to install things like IE (any version) or
Office 2000.  (It would be great to get my Windows copy of VMWare to
install and run.)  And, all of the threads that I have found where
people have asked for a list of successful applications and/or
installation processes have been danced around and seem to always go
unanswered.  So, I guess I will ask it here...

Is there a list of applications that people have successfully installed
and how they did it?

Anyway, that's enough babbling for now.  Sorry for being so long-winded.
I just figure, the more info, the better... on both of our parts.

Any info, advice, ramblings, frustrations, or humorous remarks are
welcome.  Thanx, in advance.

R/S
Fred



-----Original Message-----
From: Greg Turner [mailto:gmturner007 at ameritech.net] 
Sent: Sunday, November 17, 2002 2:11 PM
To: Fredrick P. Lackey
Cc: Mark Hannessen; wine-devel at winehq.com
Subject: Re: Wine with .NET?


On Sunday 17 November 2002 12:21 pm, Mark Hannessen wrote:
> > Ladies and Gentlemen,
> >
> > I am a Microsoft developer and currently pushing the capabilities of

> > the .NET Framework.  On that same note, I am considering moving my 
> > laptop to some version of Linux (either Solaris v8.0 or Red

Sorry to be pedantic, but Solaris is not Linux.  They both belong to the

same branch of the Unix family tree (SVR4), but they are distant 
cousins, at best (sufficiently distant to have children together :) )

Wine supports both platforms, if I understand the current state of 
affairs correctly.  You will probably need gcc to make wine work on 
Solaris -- I doubt Sun cc is going to cut it (I could be wrong).

> > Hat).  I assumed that I would need to use VMWare or some equivalent 
> > to continue using Visual Studio .NET.  Can anyone give me some 
> > advice?

I'm glad to hear that you prefer wine to VMWare: this is the correct 
order of preference :)  Unfortunately, VMWare may be your best bet at 
this time, if you plan to achieve productivity on VS.NET under linux 
anytime soon (see below).

> >
> > Many thanx,
> > Fred Lackey
> > Orlando, Florida
>
> have you already tryd wine to run visual studio .NET ?
> in theory it is possible but i don't think anyone has ever tryd. ( and

> it will likely not work yet, feel free to send patches )

I would not expect much .NET stuff to work on wine.  We do not have an 
MSIL interpreter, and our loader doesn't support the new .NET 
executable conventions (whatever they are -- I don't know, but I am 
told that there are some).  We also lack any implementation of the CLR, 
and I'm not sure we even have IE6 working yet (?).

Assuming, as many are, that .NET will actually catch on, wine will 
probably start to worry about this stuff sooner or later.  But, so far, 
we seem to have our hands full just trying to catch up with the Windows 
"DNA" platform.  

Of course, as Mark suggests, if you want to help enhance wine to provide

.NET support, you may.  I just took a peek at their site: the Mono 
libraries are LGPL-licensed, and the Mono class libraries are 
MIT/X11-licensed, so from a licensing perspective, utilizing Mono to 
achieve .NET Framework capabilities under wine seems quite viable.

.exe's you build under VC++.NET as native executables will probably work

under wine (I have seen examples of this).

> if you want to port visual studio .NET to linux using wine you should 
> use winemaker.

Somehow, I am inclined to presume that there is a misunderstanding 
between yourself and Mark regarding what you mean by "Microsoft 
developer"?

-- 
gmt

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things;
the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic
feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much
worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing
to fight; nothing he cares about more than his own
personal safety; is a miserable creature who has no
chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the
exertions of better persons than himself."

-- John Stuart Mill





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