Try wineprefixcreate to repair old .wine instead of deleting

Dan Kegel · Post by **Dan Kegel** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 4:48 am

Alexandre says we should have users try wineprefixcreate
before having them blow away their old .wine directory.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Alexandre Julliard <[email protected]>
Date: Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 2:44 AM
Subject: Re: Proposal: versioning .wine directory
To: James Hawkins <[email protected]>
Cc: Austin English <[email protected]>, [email protected],
Stefan Dösinger <[email protected]>, Dan Kegel <[email protected]>

"James Hawkins" <[email protected]> writes:

If we have a stable wine prefix in 1.0, I don't see what could
possibly be added in 1.2 that would break that. The idea is that,
even if you add a new dll that needs to be registered in, say, 1.0.5,
you still don't need to remove your wine prefix or reinstall any apps.

That should already be the case, there's nothing magical about 1.0 that
would suddenly cause that to happen. And if there are cases where it
doesn't work we have to fix them before 1.0 is out. I think we should
stop telling people to blow away their .wine, and have them run
wineprefixcreate instead. Then if wineprefixcreate doesn't do the
update correctly we need to figure out why and fix it. Once we are
confident that it can do the update safely we can have it run
automatically when it detects an upgrade.

--
Alexandre Julliard
[email protected]

Mark Knecht · Post by **Mark Knecht** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 1:13 pm

This is good info Dan. Thanks.

I must say that as a user type I think the program name
'wineprefixcreate' has got to be one of the worst I've run into in a
long, long time. I suppose it has some histroy that makes sense if you
know it but for a new user coming to Wine for the first time I can
hardly imagine a name less descriptive!

- Mark

On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 2:48 AM, Dan Kegel <[email protected]> wrote:

Alexandre says we should have users try wineprefixcreate
before having them blow away their old .wine directory.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Alexandre Julliard <[email protected]>
Date: Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 2:44 AM
Subject: Re: Proposal: versioning .wine directory
To: James Hawkins <[email protected]>
Cc: Austin English <[email protected]>, [email protected],
Stefan Dösinger <[email protected]>, Dan Kegel <[email protected]>

"James Hawkins" <[email protected]> writes:

If we have a stable wine prefix in 1.0, I don't see what could
possibly be added in 1.2 that would break that. The idea is that,
even if you add a new dll that needs to be registered in, say, 1.0.5,
you still don't need to remove your wine prefix or reinstall any apps.
That should already be the case, there's nothing magical about 1.0 that
would suddenly cause that to happen. And if there are cases where it
doesn't work we have to fix them before 1.0 is out. I think we should
stop telling people to blow away their .wine, and have them run
wineprefixcreate instead. Then if wineprefixcreate doesn't do the
update correctly we need to figure out why and fix it. Once we are
confident that it can do the update safely we can have it run
automatically when it detects an upgrade.

--
Alexandre Julliard
[email protected]

austin987 · Post by **austin987** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 1:41 pm

On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 1:13 PM, Mark Knecht <[email protected]> wrote:

This is good info Dan. Thanks.

I must say that as a user type I think the program name
'wineprefixcreate' has got to be one of the worst I've run into in a
long, long time. I suppose it has some histroy that makes sense if you
know it but for a new user coming to Wine for the first time I can
hardly imagine a name less descriptive!

- Mark

On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 2:48 AM, Dan Kegel <[email protected]> wrote:
Alexandre says we should have users try wineprefixcreate
before having them blow away their old .wine directory.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Alexandre Julliard <[email protected]>
Date: Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 2:44 AM
Subject: Re: Proposal: versioning .wine directory
To: James Hawkins <[email protected]>
Cc: Austin English <[email protected]>, [email protected],
Stefan DÃ¶singer <[email protected]>, Dan Kegel <[email protected]>

"James Hawkins" <[email protected]> writes:

If we have a stable wine prefix in 1.0, I don't see what could
possibly be added in 1.2 that would break that. The idea is that,
even if you add a new dll that needs to be registered in, say, 1.0.5,
you still don't need to remove your wine prefix or reinstall any apps.
That should already be the case, there's nothing magical about 1.0 that
would suddenly cause that to happen. And if there are cases where it
doesn't work we have to fix them before 1.0 is out. I think we should
stop telling people to blow away their .wine, and have them run
wineprefixcreate instead. Then if wineprefixcreate doesn't do the
update correctly we need to figure out why and fix it. Once we are
confident that it can do the update safely we can have it run
automatically when it detects an upgrade.

--
Alexandre Julliard
[email protected]

It is listed in the list of commands:
http://wiki.winehq.org/ListofCommands

Although, a name like wine-update may be a bit more intuitive. How
about something in winecfg to automatically call wineprefixcreate?

Mark Knecht · Post by **Mark Knecht** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 2:09 pm

On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 11:40 AM, Austin English
<[email protected]> wrote:

On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 1:13 PM, Mark Knecht <[email protected]> wrote:
This is good info Dan. Thanks.

I must say that as a user type I think the program name
'wineprefixcreate' has got to be one of the worst I've run into in a
long, long time. I suppose it has some histroy that makes sense if you
know it but for a new user coming to Wine for the first time I can
hardly imagine a name less descriptive!

- Mark

<SNIP>

It is listed in the list of commands:
http://wiki.winehq.org/ListofCommands

Although, a name like wine-update may be a bit more intuitive. How
about something in winecfg to automatically call wineprefixcreate?

I wasn't even thinking of changing programs. Really I'm just thinking
of users who haven't read the manuals or didn't get as far as one of
thelast things on that list. wineprefixcreate seems about as developer
like as one could possibly get. Just changing the name of
wineprefixcreate to something like WineEnvBuilder or whatever would
probably be a step in the right direction, especially if the word from
on high in the future is likely to follow Alexandre's recent comments.

Anyway, this is a comment from someone that never used
wineprefixcreate because it just sounded dangerous!

Cheers,
Mark

L. Rahyen · Post by **L. Rahyen** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 3:25 pm

On Monday March 31 2008 19:08:47 Mark Knecht wrote:

I wasn't even thinking of changing programs. Really I'm just thinking
of users who haven't read the manuals or didn't get as far as one of
thelast things on that list. wineprefixcreate seems about as developer
like as one could possibly get. Just changing the name of
wineprefixcreate to something like WineEnvBuilder or whatever

WineEnvBuilder is *very* bad name. It isn't descriptive (it's cryptic
for any newbie + it doesn't suggest that it also can update WINE prefix (not
only create one), and even worse: it even doesn't suggest that it is intended
for creating WINE prefixes), it will not be listed when you use Tab at the
command line when you already entered "wine", and it contain big letters.
Actually it doesn't matter a lot what is the name of wineprefixcreate. What
really does matter for most newbies is GUI to launch it when necessary (and
intuitive way to understand when this is necessary), or automatic launching
of wineprefixcreate if too old WINE prefix is detected (this is best option).
If you ask my opinion, wineprefixupdate would be better and more descriptive
name; and it is also good idea to add information that it can safely *update*
existing WINE prefix in output of "wineprefixcreate --help". But as I said
this is minor problems...
Currently as far as I know there is neither no simple GUI to use
wineprefixcreate for default or arbitrary WINE prefixes nor auto-run when
user have too old WINE prefix and this is exactly the problem.
It is also obvious that if we decide to silently auto-launch periodically
wineprefixcreate for existing WINE prefixes by default then it should be 100%
safe operation. Personally I almost never used it for updating existing WINE
prefixes so I don't know how safe it is currently.

austin987 · Post by **austin987** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 3:36 pm

On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 3:24 PM, L. Rahyen <[email protected]> wrote:

On Monday March 31 2008 19:08:47 Mark Knecht wrote:
I wasn't even thinking of changing programs. Really I'm just thinking
of users who haven't read the manuals or didn't get as far as one of
thelast things on that list. wineprefixcreate seems about as developer
like as one could possibly get. Just changing the name of
wineprefixcreate to something like WineEnvBuilder or whatever
WineEnvBuilder is *very* bad name. It isn't descriptive (it's cryptic
for any newbie + it doesn't suggest that it also can update WINE prefix (not
only create one), and even worse: it even doesn't suggest that it is intended
for creating WINE prefixes), it will not be listed when you use Tab at the
command line when you already entered "wine", and it contain big letters.
Actually it doesn't matter a lot what is the name of wineprefixcreate. What
really does matter for most newbies is GUI to launch it when necessary (and
intuitive way to understand when this is necessary), or automatic launching
of wineprefixcreate if too old WINE prefix is detected (this is best option).
If you ask my opinion, wineprefixupdate would be better and more descriptive
name; and it is also good idea to add information that it can safely *update*
existing WINE prefix in output of "wineprefixcreate --help". But as I said
this is minor problems...
Currently as far as I know there is neither no simple GUI to use
wineprefixcreate for default or arbitrary WINE prefixes nor auto-run when
user have too old WINE prefix and this is exactly the problem.
It is also obvious that if we decide to silently auto-launch periodically
wineprefixcreate for existing WINE prefixes by default then it should be 100%
safe operation. Personally I almost never used it for updating existing WINE
prefixes so I don't know how safe it is currently.

Having read these threads on wine-devel/wine-users, it seems it looks
like a few things need to happen:

A) Quit telling people to $ rm -rf ~/.wine, and instead try $ wineprefixcreate
B) wineprefixcreate needs more thorough testing and bugs filed for any issues
C) Find some way of versioning wineprefixes, checking this when wine
is run, and either notifying the user their prefix may be out of date
or calling wineprefixcreate to update it before continuing
D) GUI wineprefixcreate some way (Possibly in winecfg?)

Comments? Is this the general consensus?

Mark Knecht · Post by **Mark Knecht** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 3:45 pm

On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 1:35 PM, Austin English <[email protected]> wrote:

On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 3:24 PM, L. Rahyen <[email protected]> wrote:
On Monday March 31 2008 19:08:47 Mark Knecht wrote:
I wasn't even thinking of changing programs. Really I'm just thinking
of users who haven't read the manuals or didn't get as far as one of
thelast things on that list. wineprefixcreate seems about as developer
like as one could possibly get. Just changing the name of
wineprefixcreate to something like WineEnvBuilder or whatever
WineEnvBuilder is *very* bad name. It isn't descriptive (it's cryptic
for any newbie + it doesn't suggest that it also can update WINE prefix (not
only create one), and even worse: it even doesn't suggest that it is intended
for creating WINE prefixes), it will not be listed when you use Tab at the
command line when you already entered "wine", and it contain big letters.
Actually it doesn't matter a lot what is the name of wineprefixcreate. What
really does matter for most newbies is GUI to launch it when necessary (and
intuitive way to understand when this is necessary), or automatic launching
of wineprefixcreate if too old WINE prefix is detected (this is best option).
If you ask my opinion, wineprefixupdate would be better and more descriptive
name; and it is also good idea to add information that it can safely *update*
existing WINE prefix in output of "wineprefixcreate --help". But as I said
this is minor problems...
Currently as far as I know there is neither no simple GUI to use
wineprefixcreate for default or arbitrary WINE prefixes nor auto-run when
user have too old WINE prefix and this is exactly the problem.
It is also obvious that if we decide to silently auto-launch periodically
wineprefixcreate for existing WINE prefixes by default then it should be 100%
safe operation. Personally I almost never used it for updating existing WINE
prefixes so I don't know how safe it is currently.

Having read these threads on wine-devel/wine-users, it seems it looks
like a few things need to happen:

A) Quit telling people to $ rm -rf ~/.wine, and instead try $ wineprefixcreate
B) wineprefixcreate needs more thorough testing and bugs filed for any issues
C) Find some way of versioning wineprefixes, checking this when wine
is run, and either notifying the user their prefix may be out of date
or calling wineprefixcreate to update it before continuing
D) GUI wineprefixcreate some way (Possibly in winecfg?)

Comments? Is this the general consensus?

E) What to do the VERY first time you want to install a program or
before a new program is installed? Run wineprefixcreate before running
winecfg? Before installation?

To date if I am testing some app I basically blow away .wine in my
test account so that I don't pick up dlls and other things I've done
in the existing .wine directory. I figure that's required if anyone is
going to duplicate exactly what I've done. Basically, what's the best
way to get started?

The Wine HowTo page really doesn't say much about this. ("How to help
get applications working in Wine") It seems to assume previous
experience installing apps under Wine and just says check the AppDB
and join the mailing list. It would be great if we had a walk through
for folks but I've said this before.

- Mark

austin987 · Post by **austin987** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 3:48 pm

On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 3:44 PM, Mark Knecht <[email protected]> wrote:

On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 1:35 PM, Austin English <[email protected]> wrote:
On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 3:24 PM, L. Rahyen <[email protected]> wrote:
On Monday March 31 2008 19:08:47 Mark Knecht wrote: WineEnvBuilder is *very* bad name. It isn't descriptive (it's cryptic
for any newbie + it doesn't suggest that it also can update WINE prefix (not
only create one), and even worse: it even doesn't suggest that it is intended
for creating WINE prefixes), it will not be listed when you use Tab at the
command line when you already entered "wine", and it contain big letters.
Actually it doesn't matter a lot what is the name of wineprefixcreate. What
really does matter for most newbies is GUI to launch it when necessary (and
intuitive way to understand when this is necessary), or automatic launching
of wineprefixcreate if too old WINE prefix is detected (this is best option).
If you ask my opinion, wineprefixupdate would be better and more descriptive
name; and it is also good idea to add information that it can safely *update*
existing WINE prefix in output of "wineprefixcreate --help". But as I said
this is minor problems...
Currently as far as I know there is neither no simple GUI to use
wineprefixcreate for default or arbitrary WINE prefixes nor auto-run when
user have too old WINE prefix and this is exactly the problem.
It is also obvious that if we decide to silently auto-launch periodically
wineprefixcreate for existing WINE prefixes by default then it should be 100%
safe operation. Personally I almost never used it for updating existing WINE
prefixes so I don't know how safe it is currently.

Having read these threads on wine-devel/wine-users, it seems it looks
like a few things need to happen:

A) Quit telling people to $ rm -rf ~/.wine, and instead try $ wineprefixcreate
B) wineprefixcreate needs more thorough testing and bugs filed for any issues
C) Find some way of versioning wineprefixes, checking this when wine
is run, and either notifying the user their prefix may be out of date
or calling wineprefixcreate to update it before continuing
D) GUI wineprefixcreate some way (Possibly in winecfg?)

Comments? Is this the general consensus?

E) What to do the VERY first time you want to install a program or
before a new program is installed? Run wineprefixcreate before running
winecfg? Before installation?

To date if I am testing some app I basically blow away .wine in my
test account so that I don't pick up dlls and other things I've done
in the existing .wine directory. I figure that's required if anyone is
going to duplicate exactly what I've done. Basically, what's the best
way to get started?

The Wine HowTo page really doesn't say much about this. ("How to help
get applications working in Wine") It seems to assume previous
experience installing apps under Wine and just says check the AppDB
and join the mailing list. It would be great if we had a walk through
for folks but I've said this before.

- Mark

If ~/.wine doesn't exists when you run an app for the first time, the
prefix is automatically created. I.e.,
$ rm -rf ~/.wine
$ wine notepad

Note: This doesn't occur if you do:
$ rm -rf ~/test
$ WINEPREFIX=~/test wine notepad

austin987 · Post by **austin987** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 4:00 pm

On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 3:52 PM, Mark Knecht <[email protected]> wrote:

On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 1:47 PM, Austin English <[email protected]> wrote:
If ~/.wine doesn't exists when you run an app for the first time, the
prefix is automatically created. I.e.,
$ rm -rf ~/.wine
$ wine notepad
This is on the WineHQ Wine HowTo page where? Clearly I've never done
it this way so you now have one convert.

It's alluded to in the FAQ, but should be made more clear. Someone
with a flair with words/instructions care to update the FAQ?

How is this different than

rm -rf .wine
winecfg

The only difference would be that you launch winecfg, whereas I
launched notepad

Mark Knecht · Post by **Mark Knecht** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 4:28 pm

On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 2:00 PM, Austin English <[email protected]> wrote:

On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 3:52 PM, Mark Knecht <[email protected]> wrote:
On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 1:47 PM, Austin English <[email protected]> wrote:

If ~/.wine doesn't exists when you run an app for the first time, the
prefix is automatically created. I.e.,
$ rm -rf ~/.wine
$ wine notepad
This is on the WineHQ Wine HowTo page where? Clearly I've never done
it this way so you now have one convert.
It's alluded to in the FAQ, but should be made more clear. Someone
with a flair with words/instructions care to update the FAQ?

It seems that the actual FAQ page ( http://wiki.winehq.org/FAQ )
doesn't mention either winprefixcreate or 'wine notepad' so clearly
there is at least a little bit of writing that could be done.

I don't have a clue about the how of modifying a Wiki, Never done it myself.

How is this different than

rm -rf .wine
winecfg
The only difference would be that you launch winecfg, whereas I
launched notepad

I've used winecfg in the past so as to configure Alsa and drive D: as
a CDROM. If I run 'wine notepad' and then launch into a full blown
install of some game do I have sound? Does that setup recognize the
CD? I don't know as I haven't ever done it that way.

- Mark

austin987 · Post by **austin987** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 4:30 pm

On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 4:28 PM, Mark Knecht <[email protected]> wrote:

I've used winecfg in the past so as to configure Alsa and drive D: as
a CDROM. If I run 'wine notepad' and then launch into a full blown
install of some game do I have sound? Does that setup recognize the
CD? I don't know as I haven't ever done it that way.

- Mark

Yes. You don't even have to run wine notepad (that was just an example).

$ rm -rf ~/.wine
$ wine your_game_setup.exe

Will launch the game setup with default wine options (Win XP/ALSA/no
virtual desktop/etc.). If your game needs any of those settings
changed, then you need to run winecfg first, or manually edit the
registry.

Mark Knecht · Post by **Mark Knecht** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 4:35 pm

On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 2:30 PM, Austin English <[email protected]> wrote:

On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 4:28 PM, Mark Knecht <[email protected]> wrote:
I've used winecfg in the past so as to configure Alsa and drive D: as
a CDROM. If I run 'wine notepad' and then launch into a full blown
install of some game do I have sound? Does that setup recognize the
CD? I don't know as I haven't ever done it that way.

- Mark

Yes. You don't even have to run wine notepad (that was just an example).

$ rm -rf ~/.wine
$ wine your_game_setup.exe

Will launch the game setup with default wine options (Win XP/ALSA/no
virtual desktop/etc.). If your game needs any of those settings
changed, then you need to run winecfg first, or manually edit the
registry.

OK, I'll give that a try. However the process

rm -rf .wine
winecfg

implies that Alsa isn't set up by default. When I do that and go to
the Audio tab it tells me nothing is selected and that I have to
choose something. I choose Alsa, hear a sound (I think) and then apply
it.

I'm not sure if the creation of a D: drive and telling Wine that it's
a CD is required but I always do it. I suppose I should try a few
installs with different choices to see how they go.

Thanks,
Mark

Mark Knecht · Post by **Mark Knecht** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 4:36 pm

On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 1:47 PM, Austin English <[email protected]> wrote:

On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 3:44 PM, Mark Knecht <[email protected]> wrote:
On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 1:35 PM, Austin English <[email protected]> wrote:
On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 3:24 PM, L. Rahyen <[email protected]> wrote: Having read these threads on wine-devel/wine-users, it seems it looks
like a few things need to happen:

A) Quit telling people to $ rm -rf ~/.wine, and instead try $ wineprefixcreate
B) wineprefixcreate needs more thorough testing and bugs filed for any issues
C) Find some way of versioning wineprefixes, checking this when wine
is run, and either notifying the user their prefix may be out of date
or calling wineprefixcreate to update it before continuing
D) GUI wineprefixcreate some way (Possibly in winecfg?)

Comments? Is this the general consensus?

E) What to do the VERY first time you want to install a program or
before a new program is installed? Run wineprefixcreate before running
winecfg? Before installation?

To date if I am testing some app I basically blow away .wine in my
test account so that I don't pick up dlls and other things I've done
in the existing .wine directory. I figure that's required if anyone is
going to duplicate exactly what I've done. Basically, what's the best
way to get started?

The Wine HowTo page really doesn't say much about this. ("How to help
get applications working in Wine") It seems to assume previous
experience installing apps under Wine and just says check the AppDB
and join the mailing list. It would be great if we had a walk through
for folks but I've said this before.

- Mark

If ~/.wine doesn't exists when you run an app for the first time, the
prefix is automatically created. I.e.,
$ rm -rf ~/.wine
$ wine notepad

This is on the WineHQ Wine HowTo page where? Clearly I've never done
it this way so you now have one convert.

How is this different than

rm -rf .wine
winecfg

??

Note: This doesn't occur if you do:
$ rm -rf ~/test
$ WINEPREFIX=~/test wine notepad

Thanks,
Mark