Why is winemaker output a library & symlink?

[Ove Kaaven]

Donn Miller <dmmiller at cvzoom.net> writes:

> Marcus Meissner wrote:
> > 
> > In article <ax%R6.33895$hV3.53576 at newsfeeds.bigpond.com>,
> > David Rowe <voicet at bigpond.com.au> wrote:
> 
> 
> > >1)  Why does winemaker (after ./configure, make etc) produce a library and
> > >sym link as the output, e.g. why not an executable.
> > 
> > This is the usual invokation method of WINE binaries. Do not worry.
> 
> This is an excellent question.  Is there any reason why you couldn't
> just link the required Wine emulation functions into the executable
> without the aid of the symlink/wine executable?

C++ frameworks like MFC have global constructors, which are always called
at module load time. But typically, they must *not* be called before Wine
has initialized itself. The only portable way to fix that seems to be to
first launch Wine, let Wine initialize itself, then let it load the main
application in its shared library form, which may then safely call its
C++ global constructors on load.

This has been explained before, I think. Try the Search on www.winehq.com.