Wine and Gnome menus...

[mdevour]

Hi all,

I've spent several days tinkering with Wine and have uncovered what seems to be a mess: Menus in Gnome for Wine applications...

I'm running Debian 4.0 (Etch) with a few backports, and Gnome 2.14.3.

I've progressed from the version of Wine that's in the Etch repositories, 0.9.25-2.1, through the one in backports, 1.0-rc1-1, to the current 1.1.1 from the WineHQ repositories. All were installed with either apt-get or Synaptic.

There seems to be some mechanism in place in the Debian implementation of Wine under Gnome that attempts to create menu entries for the Wine configuration and Uninstall programs and any installed Wine applications in the main Gnome Applications menu. I say "attempts" because it's buggy as heck.

I ran the installer for a program, MagicISO, which created a directory in Program Files containing about 4 different things, at least two of which should have had menu entries. Instead, only the Uninstall applet showed up and there was no entry for the program itself.

No problem! I can just make a new menu entry myself, right? NOPE!!

It turns out that the very nice menu editor for the Gnome menus, a program called Alecarte, does not even display the Wine sub-menu that was created and updated during the installation of wine and subsequent applications.

After several days of experimenting, the only thing I've managed to do is to break things further. If you Google 'gnome menus wine' you'll see many reports of broken, missing, un-editable or unremovable Gnome menus in Debian and the various Ubuntus, with no easy or reliable answer, and many partial, inconsistent, and inevitably primitive approaches being suggested.

As of now, I think I have finally succeeded in completely uninstalling and purging the old version of Wine and all its configuration and data files, and doing a fresh install of the current beta release from WineHQ.

Installing that version tells me that the creation of nice, tidy gnome menu entries is not within the scope of the Wine project itself. Is that correct?

If so, then do you have any suggestions or maybe a broader perspective on why this situation exists and what, if anything, might be happening and where I can learn more?

Or if I'm missing something obvious, please clue me in! It won't be the last time I'm proven clueless with this Linux thing!

Be well,

Mike D.

[vitamin]

There seems to be some mechanism in place in the Debian implementation of Wine under Gnome that attempts to create menu entries for the Wine configuration and Uninstall programs and any installed Wine applications in the main Gnome Applications menu. I say "attempts" because it's buggy as heck.

Please be specific what didn't work? If you let Wine do everything it works in 99% cases. If you try and start "editing" something without knowing what you doing - the chances are pretty good you'll break it.

Instead, only the Uninstall applet showed up and there was no entry for the program itself.

How do you know what should be there? Did you checked under windows? Also have you verified that installation actually exited? Wine will wait until install is complete to create some icons. And sometimes installers hang.

It turns out that the very nice menu editor for the Gnome menus, a program called Alecarte, does not even display the Wine sub-menu that was created and updated during the installation of wine and subsequent applications.

You should report this bug to creators of this program. Wine follows XDG standard when creating menu entries. If it doesn't work with your menu editor - it's not standard complaint.

Installing that version tells me that the creation of nice, tidy gnome menu entries is not within the scope of the Wine project itself. Is that correct?

You probably missunderstood that part. Wine can and does create correct menu and desktop entries for every installed program. In the same way they would appear on windows. And it works in most cases.

However vanilla Wine does not create any entries for itself (ex: winecfg, notepad, winefile, etc).

Also note that Wine does not remove menu/desktop entries on program uninstall. http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10277

[mdevour]

Please be specific what didn't work? If you let Wine do everything it works in 99% cases. If you try and start "editing" something without knowing what you doing - the chances are pretty good you'll break it.

Hi vitamin, thanks for the feedback. Hopefully I'll learn something!

I downloaded the free trial of a program called MagicISO (magiciso.com) so I could convert a .uif file I downloaded to an .iso.

I ran the installer by right clicking on it and selecting "open with wine." The installer seemed to run just fine, finished, and closed. Afterwards I had a .lnk file on my desktop, and a submenu for MagicISO was added under the Wine sub-menu of Gnome's Applications menu. It contained ONLY the launcher for the Uninstaller.

After not finding any other way to go, I finally sent a copy of that launcher to the desktop, edited it to execute the program itself instead of the uninstaller and did the job I had wanted to do... Everything since has been me trying to understand how to make things work the way they're supposed to with wine and the menus.

Instead, only the Uninstall applet showed up and there was no entry for the program itself.

How do you know what should be there? Did you checked under windows? Also have you verified that installation actually exited? Wine will wait until install is complete to create some icons. And sometimes installers hang.

Yes, I checked in the windows program files directory that was created, as well as (I'm going by memory now...) a directory in ~/.wine which showed that there was a launcher created for both parts of the program, but only one of them was being displayed in the menu.

As I said above, there was no sign that the installer had any problem at all. Everything exited fine as far as I could tell.

It turns out that ... Alecarte, does not even display the Wine sub-menu ...

You should report this bug to creators of this program. Wine follows XDG standard when creating menu entries. If it doesn't work with your menu editor - it's not standard complaint.

Okay then, that's a lot more than I knew before. I have not yet found anything in the Wine documentation that describes this aspect of its operation... but I admit I haven't spent as much time going over every single thing as I'd need to.

Installing that version tells me that the creation of nice, tidy gnome menu entries is not within the scope of the Wine project itself. Is that correct?

You probably missunderstood that part. Wine can and does create correct menu and desktop entries for every installed program. In the same way they would appear on windows. And it works in most cases.

Hmmm... No doubt on the "misunderstood" part! There's been a lot of that going on over here!

All I know is that once I'd deleted every sign of my previous Wine installs by marking all the installed files for removal and purge in Synaptic, then deleting the .wine directory and the wine bits scattered through .local and, (I think) .config... I had no Wine items left in any of Gnome's menus and nothing installed that I could see in Synaptic.

Then I added the WineHQ repository to my sources list, installed wine, and ran winecfg from a command line. It created the usual disk image and directories and I could run the file manager from Nautilus' right click menu. I also reinstalled MagicISO, and that all seemed to work, too...

However, this time, no sign of anything Wine related appeared in the Gnome menu system, so I assumed that that was the normal state of affairs for a vanilla wine install.

So where and how am I supposed to get wine to create its menu items, and where should I look for the documentation for this? Can I assume that because it didn't work automatically with what I've done so far that my system is mucked up, or is there something more I'm supposed to do before it will?

However vanilla Wine does not create any entries for itself (ex: winecfg, notepad, winefile, etc).

Also note that Wine does not remove menu/desktop entries on program uninstall. http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10277

Okay, now that is consistent with all the behavior I've seen so far with this most recent (v1.1.1) install.

I've been as specific as I can from memory. I hope it'll give you some idea what I've been doing wrong or what might be broken here.

Thanks,

Mike D.

[vitamin]

I ran the installer by right clicking on it and selecting "open with wine." The installer seemed to run just fine, finished, and closed. Afterwards I had a .lnk file on my desktop, and a submenu for MagicISO was added under the Wine sub-menu of Gnome's Applications menu. It contained ONLY the launcher for the Uninstaller.

Run it from the terminal and post complete output. If it's too big (100s of lines - pastebin it).

As I said above, there was no sign that the installer had any problem at all. Everything exited fine as far as I could tell.

How did you check if it exited? Did you use 'ps ax' or any other program showing all processes?

[mdevour]

Run it from the terminal and post complete output.

Okay, here 'tis:

Code: Select all

mike@Old-HP:~$ wine /home/shared/MagicISO/Setup_MagicISO.exe
Could not load Mozilla. HTML rendering will be disabled.
wine: configuration in '/home/mike/.wine' has been updated.
fixme:shell:IShellLinkA_fnGetPath (0x138bd8): WIN32_FIND_DATA is not yet filled.
fixme:shell:DllCanUnloadNow stub
fixme:shell:IShellLinkA_fnGetPath (0x15a948): WIN32_FIND_DATA is not yet filled.
fixme:shell:DllCanUnloadNow stub
fixme:shell:IShellLinkA_fnGetPath (0x138c60): WIN32_FIND_DATA is not yet filled.
fixme:shell:DllCanUnloadNow stub
fixme:shell:IShellLinkA_fnGetPath (0x138c60): WIN32_FIND_DATA is not yet filled.
fixme:shell:DllCanUnloadNow stub
fixme:shell:IShellLinkA_fnGetPath (0x138c60): WIN32_FIND_DATA is not yet filled.
fixme:shell:DllCanUnloadNow stub
fixme:shell:DllCanUnloadNow stub
fixme:shell:DllCanUnloadNow stub
fixme:shell:DllCanUnloadNow stub
fixme:shell:DllCanUnloadNow stub
mike@Old-HP:~$ fixme:shell:DllCanUnloadNow stub
mike@Old-HP:~$

How did you check if it exited? Did you use 'ps ax' or any other program showing all processes?

Nope, but the full-screen install application disappeared, and I was left with a launcher for the program on the desktop, just as it did this time.

Looking at the list of processes sorted by process ID, I don't see anything started after the terminal that looks like a piece of wine: gnome-terminal, gnome-pty-helper, bash...

And there's no sign of any menu entry for or from Wine in the menus. I've done something to break that functionality!

Thanks again.

Mike D.

[dimesio]

In Windows, does MagicISO add itself to the menu? I think (I could be wrong) that winemenubuilder reads what the app would insert into the Windows menu and translates that into a Gnome or KDE menu entry, but if the app doesn't add a menu entry for itself in Windows, Wine couldn't do it either.

Have you tried installing any other programs in Wine to see if they get added to the Gnome menu?

The one other thing I can think of is, have you manually added any entries directly under Wine in the menu hierarchy (rather than using the convoluted array of submenus it like to create)? I found that in KDE doing that has prevented Wine from ever adding another entry to my menu. (Which is fine with me; I never wanted all that crap in my menus anyway.)

[Jim Hall]

On Wed, Aug 13, 2008 at 2:06 PM, dimesio <[email protected]> wrote:

In Windows, does MagicISO add itself to the menu? I think (I could be
wrong) that winemenubuilder reads what the app would insert into the Windows
menu and translates that into a Gnome or KDE menu entry, but if the app
doesn't add a menu entry for itself in Windows, Wine couldn't do it either.

Have you tried installing any other programs in Wine to see if they get
added to the Gnome menu?

The one other thing I can think of is, have you manually added any entries
directly under Wine in the menu hierarchy (rather than using the convoluted
array of submenus it like to create)? I found that in KDE doing that has
prevented Wine from ever adding another entry to my menu. (Which is fine
with me; I never wanted all that crap in my menus anyway.)


*************************************

After a lot of frustration, this is what I've found. Running Wine 1.0 from
Ove.


First: Alacarte is severly non-functional in several areas, trying to modify
entries is very difficult to impossible. This is Gnome's fault. Don't bother
to try.

Second: Gnome menus are standard complient, Alacarte is the problem.

Third: Wine menu entries will sometimes add by doing the following.
1) Start a root terminal and type "update-menus"
2) Do the same from a normal terminal logged in to the user that runs Wine.
3) As crazy as it sounds - reboot.
4) Recognise that this may not work for some entries, there may be no
current fix.

Forth: BSD is supposed to have a workable menu editor for Gnome, but I don't
know if there is an Etch port. If you look, find one, and it works, please
let us know.


Jim
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[mdevour]

In Windows, does MagicISO add itself to the menu? I think (I could be wrong) that winemenubuilder reads what the app would insert into the Windows menu and translates that into a Gnome or KDE menu entry, but if the app doesn't add a menu entry for itself in Windows, Wine couldn't do it either.

Hi dimesio,

Well, I know that with my previous wine install it did create a desktop icon and a menu entry for at least the uninstaller app.

Have you tried installing any other programs in Wine to see if they get added to the Gnome menu?

Not on this install, but before I wiped it I had Microsoft Office '97 working about as well as it would work on this machine... and menu items galore!

The one other thing I can think of is, have you manually added any entries directly under Wine in the menu hierarchy (rather than using the convoluted array of submenus it like to create)? I found that in KDE doing that has prevented Wine from ever adding another entry to my menu. (Which is fine with me; I never wanted all that crap in my menus anyway.)

On the last install, yes, I did manage to create a menu entry using some CLI trick or other which I don't remember the details of.

Right now, menu-related activity is completely broken. Since I manually scrubbed the .wine directory and some menu items in, I think, .local and maybe .config, and re-installed the new version from WineHQ, there are no Wine, Wine configuration, or Wine uninstall menu items like there were before, and installing this one program (MagicISO) doesn't trigger the creation of anything new, menu-wise.

I suppose I should try installing Office 97 again and see what that might shake loose.

Thanks for your input,

Mike D.

[mdevour]

After a lot of frustration, this is what I've found.

First: Alacarte is severly non-functional in several areas, trying to modify
entries is very difficult to impossible. This is Gnome's fault. Don't bother
to try.

Second: Gnome menus are standard complient, Alacarte is the problem.

(... etc. snipped)

Well, that's completely consistent with my experience, Jim, sadly.

Third: Wine menu entries will sometimes add by doing the following.
1) Start a root terminal and type "update-menus"
2) Do the same from a normal terminal logged in to the user that runs Wine.
3) As crazy as it sounds - reboot.
4) Recognise that this may not work for some entries, there may be no
current fix.

Well, no joy for me. Mine's a bit more broken that most, I suspect... I think it's time for me to reinstall Linux... NOT!

Forth: BSD is supposed to have a workable menu editor for Gnome, but I don't know if there is an Etch port. If you look, find one, and it works, please let us know.

Ooh boy! A chance to try to compile something from source??? For me that'd likely be a comedy. <hehehe>

I'll at least do a little googling and see. Thanks for the feedback, Jim. It's appreciated.

Be well,

Mike D.

[louie928]

mdevour,
If it's any consolation for you, I have about the same problem with no Wine application menus in Gnome. I can install programs under Wine. Most do not show up anywhere. I can find the .exe file in .Wine\ drive_c:\Program Files, right click on it and open it with "Wine Windows Program Loader". A few programs will put a launcer on the desktop when they install, but I'd rather not have so much desktop clutter. Going to menu, Applications, Tools, Emulators, Wine, I can configure WIne with Configurator, and there is a menu choice for "Program Manager" , but it is empty. I can't add anything to it.

Wine version is 1.13
Linux is Mandriva 2008.1 x86_64
Desktop is Gnome

Did you figure this out, or dump Wine and move on.

Louie

[mdevour]

mdevour,
If it's any consolation for you, I have about the same problem with no Wine application menus in Gnome...
Did you figure this out, or dump Wine and move on.

Louie

Hi Louie,

Yeah, I'm afraid that Wine has struck out for me so far on the couple of things that I need a windows program for: A simple to-do list manager I made out of Word's outline mode, and a couple of very old games I like to play. Neither would work well with this very old and slow computer with Matrox built-in graphics.

Somehow, Wine isn't managing to update the window cleanly in Word, and Starcraft, for one, hangs early during the install. Notice that both of these are likely related to the graphics. Add this to the Gnome menu issue and I figured it's best to give the people time to work out a few more bugs.

Meanwhile, I've gotten Word to work reliably and with decent speed under VirtualBox, even on this machine, but any games more ambitious than Hearts or Solitaire are painfully slow with the virtualized graphics. So I don't really have a complete solution yet.

When I upgrade to more modern hardware and more recent versions of everything when Debian Lenny goes stable, both of which I hope will happen soon, I'll revisit and see how things work for me in Wine.

Mike D.

[louie928]

mdevour,
If it's any consolation for you, I have about the same problem with no Wine application menus in Gnome...
Did you figure this out, or dump Wine and move on.

Louie

Hi Louie,

Yeah, I'm afraid that Wine has struck out for me so far on the couple of things that I need a windows program for: A simple to-do list manager I made out of Word's outline mode, and a couple of very old games I like to play. Neither would work well with this very old and slow computer with Matrox built-in graphics.

Somehow, Wine isn't managing to update the window cleanly in Word, and Starcraft, for one, hangs early during the install. Notice that both of these are likely related to the graphics. Add this to the Gnome menu issue and I figured it's best to give the people time to work out a few more bugs.

Meanwhile, I've gotten Word to work reliably and with decent speed under VirtualBox, even on this machine, but any games more ambitious than Hearts or Solitaire are painfully slow with the virtualized graphics. So I don't really have a complete solution yet.

When I upgrade to more modern hardware and more recent versions of everything when Debian Lenny goes stable, both of which I hope will happen soon, I'll revisit and see how things work for me in Wine.

Mike D.

Mike,
Thanks for responding. It's always good to know you aren't the only one out there with similar experience even if there is no fix. I've had very good results with VirtualBox running XP. I'm on a newer computer with AMD-64 and it's fine for speed. I always want Wine to work because it seems such a neat solution. It's better now than the last time I tried it. Not quite there yet I guess.

Louie