[Wine] Greater OS X integration

[Haravikk]

Okay, I'd like to start first by saying, awesome work on this project! It's been a few years since I last tracked the progress of WINE on OS X, and it's come on leaps and bounds as I can run most everything I've thrown at it so far, with only minor issues here and there, which is a damned sight better than VMWare Fusion or Parallels which have compatibility issues everywhere, despite what they would have you believe!

Now, for OS X there isn't currently even a binary, but I've been thinking about how much (or actually how little) would be required to have WINE integrate that little bit more natively into OS X, and I've come up with a few main points which might be nice if anyone is currently looking at building a package, or would like to (I might give it a go myself if I find the time):

Default folder location
While I've coped with ~/.wine/ just fine so far, it's not that easily accessible. I've ended up migrating the C: drive into a folder under ~/Documents/Virtual Machines where it's that bit easier to work with. It's also not the most user-friendly place to dig around if you want to recover files using Time Machine.

WINE as an App
While WINE obviously isn't really a .app friendly program, nor does it need to be, it would be nice if it was. The compiled binaries should theoretically be package-able as a .app with a minimum of fuss, such that a user could double-click it to get a simple "hub" screen for configuring WINE, or getting to recently used applications a little bit more quickly.

.exe files targeting WINE
With WINE as a .app, it would be possible to have .exe files double-clickable as though they themselves were regular applications. This is currently possible using a dummy-app; the way I've found to be simplest is a shell-script in an automator .app, just open automator, create a new application workflow, and throw the following into a shell task:


Code:
source ~/.profile
if test $# = 0
	then
		winefile C:
		exit
fi

for f in "$@"
do
	d=`dirname "$f"`
	f=`basename "$f"`
	cd "$d"
	wine "$f" &
done



Not desperately elegant, but it does the job to a degree. A proper app would certainly be nice for a more integrated feel, but at least the above serves as a decent stop-gap. If you'd like to download such a dummy app (I made some basic icons using the WINE glass icon) then you can grab mine here (http://depositfiles.com/files/60qz7nsrp).

"Mount" the C: drive
This one I'm not sure on, but I'd like to be able to see my C: "drive" appear in the devices list like an actual hard-drive. I've no idea how to actually do this, so for the moment I'm just making do with a symbolic link in the sidebar that points to my C: drive folder, and have given it a suitable icon.

Start-menu
This could possibly be achieved as another feature of a wine .app; quite simply a WINE .app package could add the ability for a start-menu style list on right-click. This would likely require .lnk support, but the files don't seem too complex.


Thoughts
It seems to me that the above major points may not actually be that complex, as the main hurdles would be building WINE with a suitable .app "wrapper" that can add the extra features ("hub" screen to avoid command-line, file associations, start-menu-esque jumping off point). I may give this a go myself, but I'm curious to know if anyone else has had a look at anything like this, or if someone with a bit more experience at packaging unix/linux programs into OS X .apps might be interested in having a go?