Can WINE be made for DOS using GCC for DOS?

michael at cherryblossom.homelinux.com michael at cherryblossom.homelinux.com
Sat Sep 4 21:06:40 CDT 2004


On Sat, Sep 04, 2004 at 08:26:02PM -0400, Todd S. wrote:
> Hello! My name is Todd, and I know this sounds like a stupid question, but if it was ever possible, could the "WINE" application ever be built with the "DOS" version of GCC/G++

Why use a DOS GCC/g++? Would such a thing exist?  I'd presume you'd use
a commercial, expensive, C compiler on DOS... I'm not sure building WINE
under a C dos compiler is the issue.  The issue is running it.  DOS is
16-bit.  Linux and Windows are 32-bit.  Except for the 64-bit versions
of said OSes.

> so Windows programs can be executed from DOS-mode?

I have no such experience, but I would EXTREMELY SEVERELY doubt this.

DOS is a console mode OS, and Wine runs on X11/Linux, which is a
graphical interface on a generic OS base.  Without a X server or
equivilant, you can't do this, and if you did have an X server, this
would be very pointless.

Furthermore, the same limitation that causes 80% (estimate) of Windows
apps in console mode not to work under DOS is that DOS is 16-bit, not
32-bit, and as such, uses 16 bit integers in it's C compiling.  That
would be a big issue.  You would be wanting something that allows you to
run 32-bit console apps on DOS console, a completely different utility.
(Wineconsole doesn't run on a standard terminal, IIRC, it runs under an
X display, just like wine.) Of course, you *could* try something like
Wine on X11 on Linux on UMSDOS on a MSDOS filesystem, but that would be
just running linux on top of DOS, as opposed to just running linux from
a native ext2/3 or similar partiton.  (UMSDOS, btw, has huge performance
issues.)

I believe, to achieve your goal, you're looking at taking the source
code of apps, changing the ints and declares and whatnot so that the
program will run under 16-bit, and then recompiling.  But that doesn't
solve the issue of LFN, dlls, APIS, etc. etc. -- you'd probably be
better off just buying Windows, and/or installing Linux properly, and
running your app(s) under X11.

BTW, everyone else on wine-devel, please correct me if I'm wrong.

> Thanks.
> 
> Regards,
> Todd Suess

--Michael Chang



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