Request for discussion: Using PE libraries for Wine dependencies

[Erich E. Hoover]

On Mon, Apr 13, 2020 at 10:08 AM Gabriel Ivăncescu
<gabrielopcode at gmail.com> wrote:
> ...
> FWIW, if this approach is chosen, I think they should first go (or be
> read in) somewhere in wine's directory, like other libs (or how Proton
> bundles its libs in <wine_dir>/lib{,64} for example) and the system-wide
> paths after that if those aren't found (or maybe not at all, because
> most distros don't even ship with mingw libraries... and I hate being
> reliant on this fact).
>
> This is so you can use specific wine versions with specific libraries if
> you wish to do so, instead of a single system-wide choice for all
> versions. It also makes them potentially neatly stored in one place.
>
> This is more important since you won't be able to use LD_LIBRARY_PATH or
> LD_PRELOAD either to "hack" the load order for debugging or any other
> reason.
>
> Also, you'll be able to use Wine with older distros or otherwise more
> obscure ones that don't package them. Just drop it and run from its
> directory.

Why don't we modify LoadLibrary and GetProcAddress to function as
dlopen/dlsym when passed an ELF library?  This should allow us to
rework all our libraries in PE format without having to distribute a
mess of dependencies, and still allow us to respect LD_LIBRARY_PATH
and LD_PRELOAD settings.

Best,
Erich