I wanted to ask to the wine experts something about WINEPREFIX or the crossover bottles... how does the concept of "bottles" compares/differs with the concept of application virtualization (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_Virtualization) used by VMware's Thinstall (http://www.thinstall.com/products/virtualization_suite.php) (aside for the .exe container*) and Microsoft's Softgrid/Application Virtualization (http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/softgrid/default.mspx)? *I have used Thinstall a bit and it encapsulates all the files required by the app to work in an exe, including the registry keys (they call it "virtual registry") aside from these two products, how does it compares to the portableapps (http://portableapps.com/) process (which is in turn similar to thinstall but it's not an automated process and doesn't have the "virtual registry")?... why do the bottles need a "whole" c: drive?
On Fri, Mar 7, 2008 at 11:37 AM, Phobos <wineforum-user at winehq.org> wrote:> how does the concept of "bottles" compares/differs with ... Thinstall ... > and http://portableapps.com ?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 (that's bug http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=11797 ). 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. Oh, wait, I think some Chinese company has done that, and made a thinstall-like thing for Linux that rolls up Wine plus a WINEPREFIX into a single linux executable. Lessee... nope, I can't recall what they're called. I think they were mentioned on wine-devel as a possible wine license violator a few years ago. (Not specops, not unified kernel, can't recall...) - Dan
Phobos wrote:> I wanted to ask to the wine experts something about WINEPREFIX or the crossover bottles... > > how does the concept of "bottles" compares/differs with the concept of application virtualization (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_Virtualization) used by VMware's Thinstall (http://www.thinstall.com/products/virtualization_suite.php) (aside for the .exe container*) and Microsoft's Softgrid/Application Virtualization (http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/softgrid/default.mspx)? > > *I have used Thinstall a bit and it encapsulates all the files required by the app to work in an exe, including the registry keys (they call it "virtual registry") > > aside from these two products, how does it compares to the portableapps (http://portableapps.com/) process (which is in turn similar to thinstall but it's not an automated process and doesn't have the "virtual registry")?... why do the bottles need a "whole" c: drive?Apples, oranges, and bananas. PortableApps focuses on making applications run on an external medium such as a flash drive. It does this by modifying the application itself to make it store all its settings, data files, and binaries on a path relative to some folder (eg. on a flash drive). In many cases to make an application a "PortableApp" the source code for the application is modified. The applications themselves get tweaked. For PortableApps to run on Linux/Mac environments Wine is used. Thinstall technically doesn't modify the application itself rather it packages it and everything it needs in a single executable file. When you create a Thinstall application you create a snapshot world for your application to run in. 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. All three tackle their respective goals in very different ways, but only one of them can stand by itself on a Unix platform. :D
On Fri, Mar 7, 2008 at 11:37 AM, Phobos <wineforum-user at winehq.org> wrote:> why do the bottles need a "whole" c: drive?Because it was easier that way? And as Vitamin said, the c: drive is to some extent fake, lots of Wine isn't really in there.
Jim Hall wrote:> Does all of this mean that it is possible to have a program run on a > "platform of choice/need" without actually installing it?? >No you still have to install it one way or the other.
On Sat, Mar 8, 2008 at 12:11 PM, vitamin <wineforum-user at winehq.org> wrote:> > Jim Hall wrote: > > Does all of this mean that it is possible to have a program run on a > > "platform of choice/need" without actually installing it?? > > > > No you still have to install it one way or the other. > > >Darn, another one for the "to good to be true" file, sigh. Jim -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.winehq.org/pipermail/wine-users/attachments/20080308/8ac52020/attachment.htm
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. :DI 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?
Phobos wrote:> why are they not interchangeable?... they are just files after all.. of course, you will need to make windows know what they are, but they could be made interchangeable, right?And where did you put windows itself into that picture? And registry?
no windows option, I guess? hehe.. maybe I'll try to work on it and see what can be done when I get some free time...