Running Under Windows

Uwe Bonnes
2001-04-19T14:31:13Z

Tom Hubin <thubin@clark.net> wrote:
: Hello,

: I write a commercial marine navigation and tidal current prediction
: application for Windows 3.1 (compiled with Borland c++ 3.1). I am
: considering releasing this or a variant of this under something like
: Linux. My goal is to continue to develop bells and whistles but to share
: the load with others. No particular commercial goals.

: In order to get recreational sailboat racers to use it I would like the
: public version to run under Windows too, if that is possible. Getting
: them to use any software while racing is a challenge. Getting them to
: install an OS that is not Windows will be nearly impossible.

: I am an electrical engineer and optical engineer but not a professional
: programmer. I have been programming, as necessary, since the mid 1960's.
: So I cannot exactly claim to be new to computers. But I will say that I
: do not keep up with the software business. I am only vaguely familiar
: with Linux capabilities.

: In the last 2 weeks I have connected with Linux Users Groups in Columbia
: and Laurel MD. They have given me some ideas.

: Any suggestions on how to tackle this?

Wine's purpose is a twofold:
- supply a runtime environment on X86 machines to run windows (3.1|32S |32)
executables
- supply a compiletime environment on any unix like machine to build genuine
executables from win32 sourcecode. win31|32s cross-compilation is only
partial supported and few enhancements are to be expected.

As your program is only win31, the second possibility is a no-op. So what
you can do is
- try possibility one. As you have the source and a build environment,
chasing errors in Wine's runtime implementation might be easier to find than
in binary only programs. Making available a buildable version showing errors
might help wine hackers to tackle problems.
- port your application to win32 and go to possibilty two again. Again
errors might surface and providing code showing that error might help.

PS: Unzipping cuwin.zip and running "cd win31; wine cuwin.exe" brings
up a
program showing much functionality. A course testing didn't show a crash. So
give wine a try and look yourself for errors.

Bye

--
Uwe Bonnes                bon@elektron.ikp.physik.tu-darmstadt.de

Institut fuer Kernphysik  Schlossgartenstrasse 9  64289 Darmstadt
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