Running Wine without downloading Mono and Gecko packages.

[johnfound]

I am trying to use Wine without installing it (in a portable application, located on a flash drive). It works fine, but when the application is started for the first time on the given computer, two dialogs appears, asking the user to download Mono and Gecko packages. The user is forced to click "Cancel" twice in order to continue to the application.

How I can make these dialogs to not appear at all and Mono and Gecko packages to be ignored by default during the winecfg initialization process?

[dimesio]

Include wine-mono and wine-gecko on your flash drive.

[johnfound]

Include wine-mono and wine-gecko on your flash drive.

Actually I don't need them and don't want to keep them only because of two dialog boxes. There should be some better way...

[dimesio]

You are free to do what you want, but a wineprefix without wine-gecko is considered broken. Please do not file bugs, submit AppDB test reports, or ask for help on the forum when using it.

[johnfound]

You are free to do what you want, but a wineprefix without wine-gecko is considered broken.

But after canceling installation once, WINE works as expected and does not consider wineprefix broken anymore! I don't think it is a bug. I simply want to switch off these checks at all.

Please do not ... ask for help on the forum when using it.

Hm, is it means this whole topic is illegal on this forum?

[dimesio]

The particular apps you have tried may work fine, but apps that need html rendering will be broken. The point is to avoid wasting our time troubleshooting problems caused by unsupported configurations.

As I said, you are free to do what you want, including modifying the source code to disable the check, and posting here exactly what you did. However, keep in mind that any problems you may cause by doing that are yours to solve.

[Norseman01]

I have been using Wine for a number of years without any real problems. Recently I acquired an additional Window$ program and loaded it on. The new package demanded Gecko, which got downloaded and installed. Long working programs quit outright. Most report the error as "No Default Printer". I've never had a printer on the system. I don't even load CUPS or any of the other "printer helpers". The programs I use via wine do not make html anything. I read the post that said to avoid asking for help here. OK - where do we ask "Is Wine capable of such a ghost"? If so, "How does one go about arranging it"?

Norseman01

[dimesio]

Recently I acquired an additional Window$ program and loaded it on. The new package demanded Gecko, which got downloaded and installed.

By "new package" do you mean the new Windows app, or did you also upgrade Wine? If the latter, what versions did you upgrade from/to? Wineprefixes usually survive upgrades when done regularly, but a big leap in versions can cause problems.

Try reinstalling your old apps to a clean wineprefix under the new version. You should also try installing the new app to a separate wineprefix.

[doh123]

While its considered "broken" by the developers, yes it may work, just expect there may be problems.

If you know your app doesn't need them, and you don't need help here, and you're not going to run anything else in the same wineprefix... You can prevent it from trying to get Mono and Gecko

before launching set these...
export WINEDLLOVERRIDES="mscoree,mshtml="

mscoree set to nothing will stop Mono/.NET from working and stop the prompt to install it. mshtml will do the same for IE and html rendering.

This is extremely useful, and I don't understand all the resistance to it for a custom wineprefix... they just like is wasting hundreds of mb of space per wineprefix. I can waste several gigabytes off my drive by doing what winehq says is "right" and does nothing but waste space.

[johnfound]

If you know your app doesn't need them, and you don't need help here, and you're not going to run anything else in the same wineprefix... You can prevent it from trying to get Mono and Gecko

Thanks! It is very helpful and exactly what I was looking for. Where I can read more about these magic environment variables?

[dimesio]

https://www.winehq.org/docs/wineusr-guide/x275