wine users - May 2006 - Upgrading Wine with VFAT partitions existing

I guess I've been going about things all wrong when it comes to upgrading
Wine.
I have assumed that I could simply install the newer version over the top of 
the older one and that any conversion issues would be addressed on the next 
startup. I see now that is not the case. I have not even seen any mention of 
compatibility issues in the abbreviated release announcements. I need to learn 
what steps need to be performed for each biweekly release to make upgrades go 
smoothly.

I see one major incompatibility issue that could be biting me right now. I came 
to Wine about two years ago with an existing set of 14 Win98 partitions (C; 
through P:). When a new installation of Wine takes place directory 
.wine/dosdevices is not made to use of any of these but rather a soft link from 
c: to .wine/drive_c is created. Directory .wine/drive_c does not contain any of 
*my* windows stuff. How important is it that .wine/dosdevices/c: link to 
.wine/drive_c rather than to *my* Win98 C: partition? It looks like it is very 
important but then, where should my Win98 C: partition go? I don't see how
they
can both be on the same link.

Help will be appreciated.

I don't know whether the above explains my problems with Pegasus Mail
running
in the background without even a task bar reference on Wine versions 0.9.10 
through 0.9.13.

-- 
Jim

James E. Lang <jelly@lang.hm> wrote:
> I have assumed that I could simply install the newer version over the top
of
> the older one and that any conversion issues would be addressed on the next
Conversion? What exactly is it you want converted?
> startup. I see now that is not the case. I have not even seen any mention
of
> compatibility issues in the abbreviated release announcements. I need to
learn
> what steps need to be performed for each biweekly release to make upgrades
go
> smoothly.
It is suggested to do a 'make uninstall' in the old source tree before
proceeding with installing the new one, so there is no intermingling of
files.
> I see one major incompatibility issue that could be biting me right now. I
came
> to Wine about two years ago with an existing set of 14 Win98 partitions (C;
> through P:). When a new installation of Wine takes place directory 
> .wine/dosdevices is not made to use of any of these but rather a soft link
from
> c: to .wine/drive_c is created. Directory .wine/drive_c does not contain
any of
> *my* windows stuff. How important is it that .wine/dosdevices/c: link to 
> .wine/drive_c rather than to *my* Win98 C: partition? It looks like it is
very
> important but then, where should my Win98 C: partition go? I don't see
how they
> can both be on the same link.
Well, obviously they can't. To address the broader issues here:
You could suggest to the wine developers that any vfat partitions
existing in /etc/fstab should automatically be added. About the C:
drive: You can always try and see what happens if you substitute your
windows C: partition for ~/.wine/drive_c; however, the goal of wine is
to be standalone, without requiring a windows installation. That's why
the default is to have a seperate drive C:

Daniel

On Thu, May 18, 2006 at 01:43:52PM -0700, James E. Lang
wrote:
> Thank you, Daniel, for your response.
You're welcome. And please, keep this on the maling list.
> I want ~/.wine converted rather than it being outright replaced. At least
that
> is what I think I want.
You can choose between having it freshly created, and continuing using
your old one. I don't think there is a conversion routine (not that
there is much to convert, mostly just changes to the registry or like
recently the addition of fake dlls).
> Since I install a package rather than build from source, I'm not sure
that your
> suggestion to "make uninstall" applies.  
Ah, I assumed you were using the source. In that case the package
managment of your distribution hopefully is smart enough to remove a
package before installing a new version.

> It seems to me that wine is a product that is very likely to be needed by 
> newcomers to the Linux world more than by those who have been using Linux
for
> quite some time. These same people are less likely to be building wine from
the
I disagree. Those who really need to use wine (and not just want to
because of force of habit) are newcomers as well as old gurus alike.
> source code. IMHO, those who construct the RPM and/or DEB packages need to
take
> this into account. It certainly would help if vfat partitions existing in 
> /etc/fstab could be added automatically using the same algorithm that
Windows
> uses to assign drive letters. I really don't know how wine's
drive_c would fit
That's an issue you have to discuss with the respective package
maintainer.
> into that scheme of things. You certainly can't write the wine files
over
> existing files in a vfat partition since that would cause trouble for dual 
> booting into a vanilla Windows environment.
Exactly.

Daniel