Problem with Working Directory: Mint and Fedora differences

[POSitality]

Hi guys,

I have a problem with Mint that doesn't happen in Fedora...

Brief

Testing using VirtualBox to run WINE on various distributions:

1) Fedora + Xfce + Wine 1.5.24 (installed from Fedora repositories)
2) Mint + Xfce + Wine 1.5.29 (installed from WineHQ repositories)

Problem

Creating a desktop launcher with the following options:

Command: env WINEPREFIX="/home/user/.wine" wine C:\\ICRTouch\\Boxes32.exe
Path: /home/user/.wine/dosdevices/c:/ICRTouch/

- On Fedora the program starts correctly.
- On Mint the program crashes because the EXE is not run from the working directory. Copying the launcher to the EXE working folder (ICRTouch) and running from there is, of course, fine.

Now, I've seen a lot of posts suggesting quick scripts like cd /home/user/.wine/drive_c/ICRTouch; wine C:\\ICRTouch\\Boxes32.exe (which works fine.) I've also tried wine start instead (no effect in Mint.)

So my question is this: why does Fedora work great but not Mint? Or maybe the question is: what is the difference between the (older) Fedora version and the (current) WineHQ version regarding pathing?

Best Regards,

Andy

p.s. ICRTouch is a Windows EPOS program.

[POSitality]

Quick addendum:

Removing the Path in the Fedora launcher produces the same crash result as Mint.

Also, there is no functional difference, in Fedora, between setting the path as:

/home/user/.wine/dosdevices/c:/ICRTouch/

or

/home/user/.wine/drive_c/ICRTouch/

Maybe Fedora and Mint handle working directories differently and it's nothing to do with WINE?

[lahmbi5678]

Hm, maybe something went wrong with escaping, maybe you should put
C:\\ICRTouch\\Boxes32.exe
into quotation marks, either
"C:\\ICRTouch\\Boxes32.exe" or "C:\ICRTouch\Boxes32.exe" (without escaping)

On the other hand, if you set the working path correctly and XFCE is respecting that, something like "wine Boxes32.exe" should also work. In general I'd prefer drive_c instead of c:.

[POSitality]

Mmmm, I could understand that if there were a difference between the two setups but the details on both launchers are the same.

Fedora "seems" to respect the working directory and Mint doesn't but I've read quite a few posts citing WINE to be the root of the problem. Nothing solid to back that up of course

Now, I loaded WINE on Fedora from Fedora's own repositories (older version.) And on Mint I loaded the very latest version from the repository mentioned on the Ubuntu page. I also did another test with Debian, but only version 1.4.1, which worked fine. Getting 1.5.x looked a bit tricky on Debian!

It sorta all points to it being a Mint issue but as only Windows programs are daft enough to worry about the working directory there's always that doubt!

Oh well, I think I'd best switch over to Fedora, shame as Mint is quite nicely set up.

[lahmbi5678]

Are the XFCE versions the same on Mint and Fedora? Maybe filing a bug with Mint might be a good idea.

[dimesio]

Could be related to this bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/mintmenu/+bug/714848.

[POSitality]

Thanks, dimesio, definitely points to Mint & Wine not playing nicely together

As the project I'm working on may eventually end up on production systems I have no "loyalty" to any particular distro. The Fedora install is almost as easy as Mint and Xfce is straightforward to use...

I'd say the issue is "side stepped" rather than "solved"