[Wine] Re: question about WINEPREFIX

[Phobos]

Jim wrote:
> 
> Apples, oranges, and bananas.
> 
> All three tackle their respective goals in very different ways, but only one of them can stand by itself on a Unix platform. :D


I know... after all your comment, it seems like they are not really apples, oranges and bananas, do they? :P

As you noted, they do the same, but each on it's own approach... Softgrid uses it's own way too, but in the end is the same... application containment, so it can run without modifying the real files/registry... or application virtualization

this kind of virtualization is really useful to do testing without compromising other programs or for using the apps in a portable way... so I'm very interested on it.


Jim wrote:
> 
> Again, in order to run on Unix environments Wine is used.
> 
> More over, both PortableApps and Thinstall depend on having access to a Windows runtime environment (a.k.a Windows APIs). Wine provides an alternative implementation of Windows APIs, which can then be used to run PortableApps and Thinstalled software. 


I know, I never said the apps would run outside windows/wine



vitamin wrote:
> 
> Don't confuse WINEPREFIX with what C: drive means on windows. Wine IS NOT installed in WINEPREFIX. All you have there are "fake" Wine DLLs. Whole new WINEPREFIX is a whopping 3.3MB. With Wine-Gecko - it's 21MB
> 
> So the WINEPREFIX is something like a complete "windows" environment ... without windows (or Wine).


I'm not confusing anything, that's why I put "whole" inside the quotation marks... don't you get confused :P



Jim wrote:
> 
> Phobos wrote:
> > 
> > why do the bottles need a "whole" c: drive?
> > 
> 
> Because it was easier that way?
> 


easier is better?... were there other ways to do the same?


Jim wrote:
> 
> Each bottle, or WINEPREFIX, is just a virtual C: drive, a windows
> registry, and a set of drive letter mappings. In theory one could move a WINEPREFIX around; in practice, the unix location leaks through into .lnk files
> 
> Thinstall is that plus the machinery to make it easy to use
> one of those on any Windows system, all bundled up in a .exe.
> I'm not really sure about portableapps, haven't looked at those.
> 
> But the main difference is that nobody has put the effort into
> making WINEPREFIXes portable between systems. 
> 


so, I guess it can be done then... nobody has done it, but would it be too hard to implement?... would it mean many changes or something?


another question, if it is finally done, could there be a way to make those portable WINEPREFIXes run in windows too?