2009/2/11 Ben Klein <shackl...@gmail.com>: > 2009/2/11 Luke Benstead <kaz...@gmail.com>: >> Hi all, >> >> I was thinking earlier it would be quite nice if when I double clicked >> a Windows app in GNOME it would display a nice dialog saying something >> like "This Windows application may not run correctly as it is >> currently rated Silver. Please report any bugs to the Wine project. >> Continue | Cancel". Obviously this kind of functionality is not a job >> for Wine, but for the distro. Still, it got me thinking how this kind >> of functionality might be achieved. > > There's been quite a bit of discussion along these lines recently. > Unfortunately, AppDB simply isn't reliable enough for this type of > dependence. With any luck, that will change when the recently > discussed redesign of test data submissions is set up, but it'd still > take a long time for sensible data to become reasonably usable. > >> My idea is that the appdb should allow for people to associate a list >> of checksums with an application version. For example, WoW might have >> the checksum for the setup program and the game's executable, >> associated with the appdb entry. The other extension to the appdb >> would be to allow a way to programmatically retrieve information on an >> application's rating etc. by going to a certain address (e.g. >> http://appdb.winehq.org/getAppInfoFromChecksum.php?checksum=ac2b3f5928cba...) >> which would return the info in XML or some other format. > > You've clearly put quite some thought into this, which is highly > commendable. However, I would personally be against such a move, as it > would put a lot of extra load on AppDB (in terms of network > bandwidth). I'm also not too keen about something that retrieves data > from the net every time you run an app. It's too easy for people to > mistake it for spyware.
Hmm.. I see your point. However would it really use that much bandwidth? I mean, any sane implementation of the functionality I described would only display the dialog the first time that application was used. Retrieving a tiny xml file is surely less bandwidth than browsing the appdb for the application (granted it will happen more often than people browsing the site but I still don't think it's masses of bandwidth). I can also see what you mean about spyware, but other apps retrieve stuff from the web if there is a connection (CDDB, and album covers are two examples). > Another problem with a system like this is that ratings change > depending not only on application version (which you've addressed) but > also on Wine version. Platinum apps could become Garbage for one > version (and yes, it has happened). Since AppDB test results tend to > be few and far between on version numbers, it's not really useful for > an automated "how well will this work?" system. It would have to > calculate some sort of "best fit" (which will certainly be completely > wrong on occasion), or just ignore the missing data. > > And finally, just like with the other suggestions for using the AppDB > data elsewhere, this system does not take patches into account. Some > apps require patches that completely break others (the Worms > Armageddon ddraw hack and CoD hack come to mind here). Unfortunately, > there's no sensible way to account for patched Wine in this sort of > automated system. > > It is not a bad idea to give the user some sort of feedback on how > well they should expect their app to run, but unfortunately it's > virtually impossible to account for every possibility (patches and > broken wineprefixes being the biggest problems). > You're right, it's a shame the data can't be more frequent and reliable, I just thought it would be nice to be able to probe the appdb for this information easily. :) Luke.