Fwd: Re: Building bridges by helping small ISVs
--- Forwarded message --- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: "Dan Kegel" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, wine-devel Subject: Re: Building bridges by helping small ISVs Date: Sat, 24 Dec 2005 20:53:17 +0100 On Sat, 24 Dec 2005 19:35:07 +0100, Dan Kegel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: It's frustrating that large software vendors (Adobe, Intuit, Macromedia, IBM) aren't paying much attention to Wine, even though Wine's the quickest way for them to reach the Linux desktop market. I've been trying to figure out why they're holding back. After talking with a few large vendors and the folks working on the Munich migration project, I got the distinct feeling that Wine simply doesn't have a good reputation yet. To cut through this negative fog, we need more evidence that software vendors can succeed in the Linux market using Wine. So, how do we get that, if the large vendors won't budge? One way would be to focus on the other end of the spectrum: one-person software companies. There are so many of these that Wine already supports some of them reasonably well. I'd like to see the Wine community cultivate relationships with these folks, and coax a few of them to support and promote their apps on Linux using Wine. This will mean a lot of hand-holding on our part, helping them test their apps and file and fix Wine bugs they expose. What's in it for us? Lots of things: a) the micro-ISVs we help will be a great source of bug reports and QA b) some of them will turn into evangelists c) their success will attract the larger ISVs that we're having trouble with (e.g. Intuit, Macromedia, Adobe) who *will* be able to contribute bugfixes (by hiring contractors) d) they will increase the pool of apps available for desktop linux So, what am I doing about this? Well, I'm walking through the lists of successful micro-isvs, trying out their apps, filing bugs and helping resolve them, adding AppDB entries, exchanging emails with micro-isvs that have expressed an interest in working with Wine, and updating my Wine for Windows ISVs page, http://kegel.com/wine/isv Like everything else associated with Wine, there's enough here to keep dozens of people like me busy. I hope I can inspire more folks to follow my example. If you're interested, please jump in! And do consider taking part in my little isv mailing list experiment, http://groups.google.com/group/wine-isv ; I'm going to try to use it as the place where I give ISVs special hand-holding. - Dan -- Good initiative, one suggestion: avoid terms like hand-holding, it's derogatory, try guidance. It may create a negative impact if one of the holdees gets invovled in this list and gets the impression you're being condecending. Could undo the good will you're trying to create. I am not at all surprised that major companies dont want to touch Wine with a long stick. It is only just out of alpha and the regression/breakage pattern does not seem to be a lot more stable than it was in alpha. Imagine a small amateur car workshop has come up with an impressive , revolutionary new engine that works... most of the time, but the prototype engines they produce sometimes just dont work. Would you expect UPS to be interested? Having said that , I think you idea is a good way forwards. Small companies like that have a very fast dev. cycle . I have a fairly complex windows app that worked well except for some fancy frame borders , I just turned them off by default. A big co. may take 6 months to process the idea before doing 30 mins work to make a change to the code. It would be good to fill out the app DB a bit. seesnz greetz.
Re: debugging help
On Sat, 2005-12-24 at 10:04 -0500, Robert Reif wrote: > I'm trying to help someone on wine-bugs > (http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4053) with a crash in a game. > > The problem is that the game is catching and displaying the exception. > It also appears that the game won't run in winedbg. > > Does anyone have any ideas on how to proceed from here. This is just an off guess, but maybe you could try using a win32 debugger under wine (something like IDA Pro might work here; you can find a demo version that will probably do what you need here: http://www.datarescue.be/downloaddemo.htm) You might get more stuff on the crash if you do that. I don't have this game, so I haven't tested it myself. Hope this helps. James
Building bridges by helping small ISVs
It's frustrating that large software vendors (Adobe, Intuit, Macromedia, IBM) aren't paying much attention to Wine, even though Wine's the quickest way for them to reach the Linux desktop market. I've been trying to figure out why they're holding back. After talking with a few large vendors and the folks working on the Munich migration project, I got the distinct feeling that Wine simply doesn't have a good reputation yet. To cut through this negative fog, we need more evidence that software vendors can succeed in the Linux market using Wine. So, how do we get that, if the large vendors won't budge? One way would be to focus on the other end of the spectrum: one-person software companies. There are so many of these that Wine already supports some of them reasonably well. I'd like to see the Wine community cultivate relationships with these folks, and coax a few of them to support and promote their apps on Linux using Wine. This will mean a lot of hand-holding on our part, helping them test their apps and file and fix Wine bugs they expose. What's in it for us? Lots of things: a) the micro-ISVs we help will be a great source of bug reports and QA b) some of them will turn into evangelists c) their success will attract the larger ISVs that we're having trouble with (e.g. Intuit, Macromedia, Adobe) who *will* be able to contribute bugfixes (by hiring contractors) d) they will increase the pool of apps available for desktop linux So, what am I doing about this? Well, I'm walking through the lists of successful micro-isvs, trying out their apps, filing bugs and helping resolve them, adding AppDB entries, exchanging emails with micro-isvs that have expressed an interest in working with Wine, and updating my Wine for Windows ISVs page, http://kegel.com/wine/isv Like everything else associated with Wine, there's enough here to keep dozens of people like me busy. I hope I can inspire more folks to follow my example. If you're interested, please jump in! And do consider taking part in my little isv mailing list experiment, http://groups.google.com/group/wine-isv ; I'm going to try to use it as the place where I give ISVs special hand-holding. - Dan --
Re: Regression in MSI
Aric Cyr writes:
Sergei Rozhkov mail.ru> writes:
I think, I found a regression in msi (0.9.3 -> 0.9.4).
When I launch Syberia's setup.exe there was 87:
"fixme:ole:ITypeInfo_fnRelease destroy child objects",
displayed InstallShield Wizard with empty progress bar and stuck.
Than I tryed morrowind - again 87:
"fixme:ole:ITypeInfo_fnRelease destroy child objects",
displayed InstallShield Wizard with two filled sells in progress bar and
stuck with that:
err:ole:marshal_object object doesn't expose interface
{be6115a1-7de5-48dc-ad2a-25060e00fce2}, failing with error 0x80004002
err:ole:ClientIdentity_QueryMultipleInterfaces
IRemUnknown_RemQueryInterface failed with error 0x80004002
err:ole:marshal_object object doesn't expose interface
{be6115a1-7de5-48dc-ad2a-25060e00fce2}, failing with error 0x80004002
err:ole:ClientIdentity_QueryMultipleInterfaces
IRemUnknown_RemQueryInterface failed with error 0x80004002
Than I tryed Evil Islands - exactly the same.
All this apps installed in previous versions.
---
Sorry For My English and if I posted in wrong place || wrong time, or if
I'm wrong.
I've been having problems with most installers as well, and noted that there
were (at least) two things I had to do to get them to work at all:
1) normally I run with LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.utf8 on my system, but to get installers
and other things to work with wine (especially input field type stuff)
No, this problem appeared after I updated cvs from 0.9.3 to 0.9.4. When
I run
setup.exe it began "preparing for install" and
stuck on first or second cell of progress bar. And it doesn't write any
messages in teminal.
I have to run wine as "LC_ALL=C wine". I suspect IMM problems are the reason for this,
but haven't tracked it down.
2) for some reason I cannot install onto my FAT partition. I have /mnt/dose
mapped in Wine as e:\ (oddly enough), and if I try to install _anything_ onto
it, it fails shortly after the first file or two gets copied. _But_ if I
install to my wine-drive (~/.wine/drive_c mapped as c:\) then all works just
fine. This is rather annoying as my home drive is getting low on space and
installing large game demos for wined3d testing (which I normally put on e:\)
suck up a lot of space.
So Sergei: try installing to a Linux partition, and run wine with your locale
set to C (or POSIX I imagine), and see if that helps.
But I'm always install onto a linux partition (ext3) in ~/.wine/drive_c
mapped as c:\ .
Today I have tested many apps and every time the window "preparing for
installation" (InstallShild Wizard) appeared, there was no way to
install an app.
Regards,
Aric
debugging help
I'm trying to help someone on wine-bugs (http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4053) with a crash in a game. The problem is that the game is catching and displaying the exception. It also appears that the game won't run in winedbg. Does anyone have any ideas on how to proceed from here.
[bug 4004] MenuItemInfo vs GetMenuString - Try 2
>You don't check SetMenuItemInfo return code after the above calls and I very >much suspect that they fail leading to the observed results. Well spotted, thanks! In the one case of string -> ownerdraw you are right, and I have now modified the tests to flag a todo where this unexpectedly works on wine but fails on windows. In the case of ownerdraw -> string -> ownerdraw, the calls do indeed work and keep the saved string. Debugging on windows seems to show the string is copied and saved as well, which concurs with the rest of the patch. The fix (rather than the tests) is still accurate for this as far as I can tell. Attached is new patch, which checks the rc of the SetMenuItemInfo (and InsertMenuItem) calls... Changelog Copy and store the dwTypeData of a menu item even for a ownerdraw item, and ensure the memory allocations/freeing occurs correctly Jason 4004.patch2 Description: Binary data
Re: [lostwages] Remove winetools from download page
On 12/24/05, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Sat, 24 Dec 2005 04:22:19 +0100, Vitaliy Margolen > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > As such, you are just _a_ user of Wine that fails to listen. And there is > no point to speak with you about something that you are not even a part of. > > well since once again you prefer to ignore or not even read most of what > you chose to reply to I would agree there is little point in your replying > (maybe you understand english as poorly as you express it) . > > I suggest you ignore posts you feel not worthy of your time. > > To avoid clutting the list with this kind of unproducive exchange I will > avoid replying to any comments you make and I suggest you do likewise. > > I agree with you Peter, Vitaliy is hostile and refuses to read the comments given by other user's and people who have contributed to this project. Wine Tools is in no illegal to use each app comes with a EULA and it is the responsibility of the end user to follow any EULA. The maintainers of Wine Tools have posted in this thread that they will look into problems that Vitaliy has brought forward. Vitaliy keeps ranting that they have had time to fix all known problems in Wine Tools.. This is a joke! in fact is worse than a joke, there a open source project and there contributors work for free and contribute when they can, this is how open source works! Vitaliy says that me and Peter don't help new users so we have no say in the way they may be treated in the future. I don't know about Peter but Ive helped new users for the last four years! Ive went out of my way many times to help people find a way to get get a app or game to install or run! And for him to make such a remark only shows his knowledge of my time spent helping new users.. And I should point out Ive never complained about helping anyone I do it because its what I want to do. I agree with the other posters here that removing the link to there site will do more harm than good. This will be my last post on this subject as well, as it's fruitless to try and convince someone hell bent on destruction to change there mind. Tom >
Re: Accidentally fixed a bug :-)
Dan Kegel wrote: I've been helping a couple small ISVs test their apps and file bugs lately. To my surprise, one of the bugs (ChooseColor() not responding to keystrokes, http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4125) was easy enough to fix without any real knowledge of the code, so I posted a patch that seems to fix it (http://www.winehq.org/pipermail/wine-patches/2005-December/023048.html). It was a pleasant surprise to run into something so easy to fix. Guess I should try it more often! - Dan Yup :-) That's how programming works, doing work in building blocks, such that you only have to change a few bits when something is wrong - in the ideal situation just in (a part of) one function; glad you got this one working :-) Joris
Re: [lostwages] Remove winetools from download page
On Sat, 24 Dec 2005 04:22:19 +0100, Vitaliy Margolen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: As such, you are just _a_ user of Wine that fails to listen. And there is no point to speak with you about something that you are not even a part of. well since once again you prefer to ignore or not even read most of what you chose to reply to I would agree there is little point in your replying (maybe you understand english as poorly as you express it) . I suggest you ignore posts you feel not worthy of your time. To avoid clutting the list with this kind of unproducive exchange I will avoid replying to any comments you make and I suggest you do likewise.
