Sorry .. forgot to reply all. On Wed, 11 Feb 2009 18:08:47 +0200, Gert van den Berg <wine-de...@mohag.net> wrote: > On Wed, Feb 11, 2009 at 2:24 PM, Luke Benstead <kaz...@gmail.com> wrote: >> 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). >> > Wine transmitting every application I run to someone else would be > rather worrying... > > It should rather be opt-in. Such as "Wine has detected that it is the > first time you run this application, do you want to check AppDb for > more information (Yes/No/Ask again/Never ask for any application)" It > must be easy to disable globally as well... It might have some other > uses as well such as "A newer version of the application works > better", etc. > > I might be handy to allow automatic submission of test data to AppDb > (which IMHO might be more useful than just retrieving...), which > should automatically include the Wine executables' checksums + > version, distro info (if accessible from lsb-release, parts of the > uname output & kernel checksum, which might be used to detect the > distro), kernel version, cpu architecture, X server name and version, > graphics driver name and version, DLL overrides, etc. This might help > modified wine versions and the level of tweaks to be detected by AppDb > automatically. (There should be a very specific opt-in process for > this data's submission though, such as letting the user manually > upload a file with this data and fully disclosing the file's contents) > This kind of data can be handy for bug reports as well. > Automatic submission of test data could be a very handy tool. Scenario: User A tries to run an application, it crashes due to bugs in Wine. User A elects to submit data. Sometime in the future, User B tries to run the same application under a similar configuration. It crashes also, but User B being a sly user figures out what DLL overrides, patches, etc. allow this app to progress past the original crash point. Wine detects this and collects the information. Now when User C tries to run this app, Wine displays a message like: "This application has been known to fail under the current configuration. However, workarounds have been discovered that may yield greater success. <link to AppDB>"
That would be pretty sweet, no? -Alex Corrado