running wine automatically as a shell for w32 binaries

[Jukka A. Ukkonen]

	Hi all,

	I wrote a new imgact function for FreeBSD to start wine
	automatically as a sort of an "interpreter" for windows
	binaries.
	Obviously the interpreter does not have to be exactly wine.
	You can change the program using a sysctl variable. You can
	also use another sysctl variable to tell the kernel whether
	the emulator requires windows binaries to be compatible with
	the host processor architecture.

 	The idea of allowing systems to use wine automatically as
 	a shell style "interpreter" for windows binaries was born
 	as a kind of BSD advocacy stunt. It was simply nice to be
 	able to tell people my system was able to do something they
 	had never expected.
 	People kept telling me they are stuck with windows, because
 	they are unable to use their everyday applications in any
 	other system. When I have told about things like wine to help
 	with their problem people usually start complaining they are
 	unable to do any special tricks to start their programs in
 	an emulator. So, they do not know how to do it and they do
 	not really want to know. Obviously what they need is some
 	mechanism which "knows" instead of the user.
 	This lead me to thinking that the analogy with emulators and
 	shells is obvious. With the BSD imgact system one could just
 	add another imgact module logically similar to the one used
 	for the shell scripts. I just had to write one.
 
 	The patch is available here...

	<http://www.mawit.com/~jau/imgact_wine-4.9.patch>

	The diffs were done against 4.9-STABLE sources, but originally
 	the imgact_wine function was created in a 3.5.1 environment.
 
 	There are some things which might have to change.
 
 	(1) Currently the CPU architecture recognition does not work
 	for any other system but iX86, because the processor type
 	macros i386, alpha, ppc, etc. seem to no longer exist during
 	4.9 kernel compilation.
	Actually I would like to get all those i386, alpha, ppc, and
	what-not back!!!
 
 	(2) In case there is a w32 emulator within the kernel itself,
 	as I believe some people try to tackle the same issue in
 	NetBSD, there is a need for one more sysctl variable to tell
 	the kernel whether to use the internal emulator or an external
 	one like wine.
 
 	(3) Lacking any information of a better place to put my w32
 	related sysctl variables I put them in the kernel branch
	(kern.w32xxx). They might have to be moved somewhere else.
 
 	Anyhow, this is such a small change to the system and so easy
 	to switch on and off using sysctl I see no good reason to not
 	support this functionality. OTOH the advocacy value for novice
 	users with windows backgrounds might be quite remarkable.
 	Any GUI oriented program launcher would instantly become able
 	to handle also w32 binaries without any special knowledge of
 	wine or windows binary formats. That again is what any novice
 	with a windows background expects.

 	If you find the idea worthy to use also in your systems, feel
	free...
	You may use it or abuse it, and if it breaks you get to keep
	the pieces.

 
 	Cheers,
 		// jau
.---  ..-  -.-  -.-  .-    .-  .-.-.-    ..-  -.-  -.-  ---  -.  .  -.
  /    Jukka A. Ukkonen,                            Mawit Ltd, Finland
 /__   M.Sc. (sw-eng & cs)                    (Phone) +358-500-606-671
   /   Internet: Jukka.Ukkonen(a)Mawit.Com      (Home) +358-9-6215-280
  /    Internet: ukkonen(a)nic.funet.fi
 v     Internet: jau(a)iki.fi               

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