Question about ~/.wine/dosdevices/

[Vitaliy Margolen]

Sunday, November 13, 2005, 6:35:54 PM, Peter Berg Larsen wrote:
> and do not have
> B) 
> /home/pebl/.wine/dosdevices > ls -l
> total 0
> lrwxrwxrwx  1 pebl pebl 10 Nov 10 17:21 c: -> /mnt/windows/
>
> A implies that I cannot run programs installed under windows. B implies 
> that wine is writing something (to registry whatever) to c: which will 
> brake windows. (Note: B is not my setup)
Not necessarily. That implies that if a program depends on:
- Some registry settings that it created during the install.
- Hardcoded path to C:\Program Files\my_program\
- Created files in C:\window or C:\WINNT
one can not copy this program from one computer to another computer. And that
program have to be reinstalled in order to work.

Also Wine is something that _emulates_ windows environment inside *nix system.
Wine does not use nor requires any parts of an existent windows installation.
Wine is designed that way so one can use programs written for windows working on
*nix.

With that said, you may call Wine dumb for not being able to find existent
windows installation. But we calling it "Windows replacement". So all the cases
when someone has an access to a partition with functioning windows mean nothing
to Wine.

> Plenty who have answered have stated B, but I do not see what this has to
> do with wines ability to run a program installed under windows.
You are correct, it doesn't. It's a program's inability to be copied. Wine, as
well as a program might (and will) create/write/change/delete files under
C:\Windows. This is dangerous on a working windows drive. While at any time you
can remove ~/.wine dir and start with a clean "windows" environment, you have to
reinstall whole windows if it brakes.

> As it does not state on the wiki nor the docs that I must have installed 
> the program under wine to expect it to run, I expected wine to do clever 
Correct again. It is stated in the program's readme, that the program has to be
installed.

Vitaliy