wine users - Nov 2008 - Porting Windows app to Linux: How to access Linux devices?

Apologies if this is slightly OT. 

I have the task of porting a Windows application to Linux. Since the
build environment (Borland C++ Builder) is highly windows-centric,
Wine is my only option short of a major rewrite. I will have no
problems with the regular GUI stuff, however, I need to access special
hardware devices (unsupported by Wine) on the Linux system via ioctl
and network sockets.

My question: How can I find a way "around" Wine, accessing resources
on the host running Wine? Are there special include files and service
DLLs available in Wine for this?

Thanks,
Chris

Number 1 wine applications really are running as linux/what ever platform they
are on applications.

You will notice in virtual driver bits of wine.  They are part wine code and
part Linux code.  Same is valid to do inside dll.so or exe.so created using
wine.

You have a few options.  Number 1 added a new virtual drivers providing hardware
threw to wine so application so application exe will work on wine without needed
to rebuild it.

Embed code linux code in the application like what is done in Linux.

Also be aware some network issues can be simple lack of permissions for wine to
perform the task.  Ie using the Linux calls will still fail if its lack of
permissions.

Wine really does not try to do anything special.   Since providing more ways
really does not solve the lack of X feature problem in Wine to run non altered
exe's.