Wine as shared library patch

[Boaz Harrosh]

Alexandre Julliard wrote:

>Miguel de Icaza <miguel at ximian.com> writes:
>
>  
>
>>Could we get this in the official Wine distribution?  Peter's patch
>>includes the Makefile and configure magic as well (the rest could be
>>dropped).
>>    
>>
>
>I would really prefer for you to ship it yourself. This is not a
>general solution, and we don't want other projects to start depending
>on that.
>
>  
>

I strongly disagree!

I'm not sure what this patch can do. But if it lets you Inject into wine 
mid run from any Linux application or Library than it is tremendous. 
MPlayer can use it, a unixODBC to windowsODBC can use it, web-browser 
plug-ins can use it.

Perhaps if Migel or Peter can elaborate on what this patch can do?
 (Also if you could post somewhere public an example application that 
demonstrate the use of it.)

1) Can it enable a shared library to load Wine and hence even windows 
DLLS in-process? So a Linux Application becomes a Wine-Lib app mid run.
2) Or is it Just a way for a kind of WinLib2 type of application that 
wants to have its own main. Not needing to be run through wine, And can 
be linked as an ELF executable instead of shared-library. But if so what 
would prevent it to be 1. main was called somewhere. a Library entry 
point is called. Now it will call wine_init...
 
In any case this patch is very important and could make wine much (much) 
more usable from Linux land. Wine becomes not just a Windows Loader but 
also a basic service provider. Or at least a nice Fancy Winelib-App.

I would like to see this patch in. I agree that a global variable is 
bad. The Set-jump put NULLS every where, is even worse. It should be 
with a proper interface. Maybe even a "wine_init_ex". A regression test 
should be submitted that checks that this functionality is not broken 
with new code patches.

There are a lot of Wine orphans out there. One more is never good. In 
fact many of these orphans are so because of this above need. Load DLLs 
or Win32 functionality in a bigger Linux context. Where it is not 
practical to be a Winelib. So please bring these babies home. (Specially 
that ximian baby it looks like one with lots of potential :) )

Now if this patch is not what I think it is, and it is Just a bunch of 
crap. Than please forgive my big mouth. Perhaps some day there will be a 
patch that does what I'm looking for. (maybe I'm a dreamer, but I'm not 
the only one)

Free Life
Boaz