[t_hah]

This project is working on porting Wine to the Mac...let's get some great programmers behind this one. Whoo Hoo!

http://darwine.sourceforge.net/index.php

t

[gorickey]

This would be HUGE if ever accomplished...

[MacGorilla]

So you're poting wine to PPC platform? doesn't that defeat the purpose of wine?

[memento]

How would that defeat the purpose?

Originally posted by memento:
How would that defeat the purpose?

Hint: What does WINE stand for?

[Millennium]

Good luck to them, I guess. But if they ever get it running on a PPC machine, it will be among the single most impressive programming feats ever accomplished. I doubt it can even be done.

Getting it running on x86 would be easier; I expect they'll have that done inside a year. But that will be their fatal roadblock.

[MacGorilla]

Wine Is Not an Emulator. Its a port of windows apis to Linux. Its tied to the x86 platform, otherwise you'd have to emulate the x86 libraries, which is why it defeats the purpose. There is no wine for ppc linux for this very reason.

I admire your goals, though. Good luck.

[Sven G]

... But this, surely, looks almost exactly how Virtual PC should work (i.e., in rootless mode, essentially):



It's a potentially great project (WINE/Bochs+), also being open source: maybe even a stimulating challenge to Microsoft's proprietary Virtual PC, who knows - if it's feasible in a reasonable amount of time...

[King Bob On The Cob]

Originally posted by MacGorilla:
Wine Is Not an Emulator. Its a port of windows apis to Linux. Its tied to the x86 platform, otherwise you'd have to emulate the x86 libraries, which is why it defeats the purpose. There is no wine for ppc linux for this very reason.

I admire your goals, though. Good luck.

Would it be possible to emulate the program once, switch the byte ordering anywhere found, and then use the Wine librarys to run it as PPC coding?
I thought there was some other project underway that had to do with this type of emulation.

[insha]

Sounds like good excercise (sp?); but as a person whom switched from Winblows to Mac, I doubt I will have any use for it.

Good luck.

[Krypton]

The ToDo list shows that they've already started the coding work.

Didn't someone find out that the Indiana Jones Game uses WINE in some capacity to run the game?

[Millennium]

Originally posted by Krypton:
The ToDo list shows that they've already started the coding work.

Didn't someone find out that the Indiana Jones Game uses WINE in some capacity to run the game?

They may have used winelib, but that's not the same thing. Winelib (which is made by the same folks as WINE) is a set of libraries which re-implement the Windows API. You cannot run actual Windows EXE's with winelib alone, but you can compile Windows source code against it. The end result: a fully-native Linux application, from the same source code that made a Windows app.

Winelib is not trivial to port, but certainly it is doable. WINE itself is another matter entirely.

[willed]

So what exactly is WINE? Could it be a VPC alternative? How can this be the case if it doesn't involve MS software??

[Earth Mk. II]

Originally posted by willed:
So what exactly is WINE? Could it be a VPC alternative? How can this be the case if it doesn't involve MS software??

basically and simply, WINE implements Windows libraries on Linux systems to allow native windows programs to run without rebooting/dual-booting/whatever.

But since they're binary, you need to be running them on a x86 chip. (thus, it's not really an emulator)

This looks like an attempt to run the WINE environment through the bochs x86 emulator? I'm not really sure...

[starman]

Err...Virtual PC is cheap enough where I'll stick with that.

I wish you luck, though.

Mike

[CharlesS]

It uses Bochs, I see...

[Earth Mk. II]

yeah, Bochs is slow, comparatively... but since you wouldn't have to worry about running a full-blown windows install with Explorer.exe and all, it might actually be usable.

If they're smart, which I'm sure they are, they'd make it so that as little code as possible runs though Bochs.

[ironknee]

so from a non programmer's point of view

what would be the benefit of wine for the average end user?

could i buy a windows only app and run it under wine? without windows?

in other words, could apple one day say, run mac, unix or windows apps--without an emulator/native...??

that would be cool

[reader50]

Originally posted by Krypton:
...
Didn't someone find out that the Indiana Jones Game uses WINE in some capacity to run the game?

I found winelib in the Indiana Jones demo, and posted in Games. Didn't draw much interest...

As for what WINE is...
Programs consist of two general types of code. Binary commands to be executed by the CPU, and API calls to the OS. On an x86 system running Windoze, the binary commands are handled by the x86 CPU and the API calls are handled by Windoze - which ultimately executes the calls with it's own binary code to the CPU.

WINE works on Linux by passing a program's binary code through to the CPU, but intercepting the API calls and remapping them to native Linux API calls. Remapping an OS command from a Windoze version to a similar Linux command takes almost no resources, and Linux has more efficient internals than Windoze.

So on an x86 box, a program's binary code runs just as fast as under Windoze, and API calls can run much faster. For example, when running the Folding@home client on x86, the fastest way is to run the Win client under WINE on a fast Linux install.

To run WINE on PPC, you need to recompile WINE for Dawin, and you need a real CPU emulator (Bochs) to intercept and execute the binary commands. VPC, Bochs, and other emulators boot up a full version of Windoze in hardware emulation, which is rather slow - all code (binary and API calls) have to go through the hardware emulation.

Many programs consist almost entirely of API calls, which under WINE will run at the native OS speed. Thus, a PPC port of WINE tied to Bochs should be far faster than any other Win emulation out there. So yes, you could buy Win apps off the shelf and run them on your Mac without having to buy Windoze -- it will be both legal and much faster than VPC.

Bochs already runs under OSX, and the WINE group was talking about porting WINE at least a year ago. From what they posted, WINE has a bunch of endian code assumptions that need to be tracked down and fixed before it will compile and run on PPC. A hack to intercept and send binary code to Bochs should be much easier than tracking down all those endian assumptions.

This port is most likely much easier than most people assume, I'd expect results within less than 3 years. However, not all Win apps run under WINE yet. M$ hasn't been too good about publishing exact API specs, so a program will fail whenever it hits an API command that the WINE group hasn't completely supported yet. They encourage people to submit apps that fail under WINE so that API support can be extended.

[starman]

And who knows how different things will be in 3 years.

I'll stick with VPC.

Mike

[qnxde]

Originally posted by CharlesS:
It uses Bochs, I see...

I don't imagine it would be too bad, think about it: it's only emulating win32 and a single application; you wouldn't have the overhead of the whole of windows running with it.

[thePurpleGiant]

Originally posted by reader50:
I found winelib in the Indiana Jones demo, and posted in Games. Didn't draw much interest...

As for what WINE is...
Programs consist of two general types of code. Binary commands to be executed by the CPU, and API calls to the OS. On an x86 system running Windoze, the binary commands are handled by the x86 CPU and the API calls are handled by Windoze - which ultimately executes the calls with it's own binary code to the CPU.

WINE works on Linux by passing a program's binary code through to the CPU, but intercepting the API calls and remapping them to native Linux API calls. Remapping an OS command from a Windoze version to a similar Linux command takes almost no resources, and Linux has more efficient internals than Windoze.

So on an x86 box, a program's binary code runs just as fast as under Windoze, and API calls can run much faster. For example, when running the Folding@home client on x86, the fastest way is to run the Win client under WINE on a fast Linux install.

To run WINE on PPC, you need to recompile WINE for Dawin, and you need a real CPU emulator (Bochs) to intercept and execute the binary commands. VPC, Bochs, and other emulators boot up a full version of Windoze in hardware emulation, which is rather slow - all code (binary and API calls) have to go through the hardware emulation.

Many programs consist almost entirely of API calls, which under WINE will run at the native OS speed. Thus, a PPC port of WINE tied to Bochs should be far faster than any other Win emulation out there. So yes, you could buy Win apps off the shelf and run them on your Mac without having to buy Windoze -- it will be both legal and much faster than VPC.

Bochs already runs under OSX, and the WINE group was talking about porting WINE at least a year ago. From what they posted, WINE has a bunch of endian code assumptions that need to be tracked down and fixed before it will compile and run on PPC. A hack to intercept and send binary code to Bochs should be much easier than tracking down all those endian assumptions.

This port is most likely much easier than most people assume, I'd expect results within less than 3 years. However, not all Win apps run under WINE yet. M$ hasn't been too good about publishing exact API specs, so a program will fail whenever it hits an API command that the WINE group hasn't completely supported yet. They encourage people to submit apps that fail under WINE so that API support can be extended.

Thanks for the explanation dude, even I understood that. Sounds like a really interesting product that could really advance the platform.

[Earth Mk. II]

Originally posted by reader50:
To run WINE on PPC, you need to recompile WINE for Dawin, and you need a real CPU emulator (Bochs) to intercept and execute the binary commands. VPC, Bochs, and other emulators boot up a full version of Windoze in hardware emulation, which is rather slow - all code (binary and API calls) have to go through the hardware emulation.

Many programs consist almost entirely of API calls, which under WINE will run at the native OS speed. Thus, a PPC port of WINE tied to Bochs should be far faster than any other Win emulation out there. So yes, you could buy Win apps off the shelf and run them on your Mac without having to buy Windoze -- it will be both legal and much faster than VPC.

Good explanation, what I suspected, but wasn't sure enough about to post. Thanks.

[King Bob On The Cob]

Originally posted by qnxde:
I don't imagine it would be too bad, think about it: it's only emulating win32 and a single application; you wouldn't have the overhead of the whole of windows running with it.

I think the idea behind wine is so you don't have to emulate Win32...

[reader50]

Updates and clarifications...

They are not using Bochs for the binary emulation. Instead, they are using QEMU which is much faster than Bochs.

Their FAQ page has a decent explanation of how they are doing it and what's done so far.

The ToDo page is the place to bookmark. It gives status info on what is done, and who is working on what. WineLib has been ported, and they are 40% done on the Wine app launcher. Binary emulation through QEMU is 25% done.

Looks like the major holdup is that only one person is working on the serious coding. I can see why they called for developers to join, most of the things to do have no one assigned at all.

[Link]

I'd love to help but not just yet.. no idea how to code this kinda stuff...

In 6 months that will have changed greatly learning C++ right now and planning to take up cocoa afterwards ;}

[mark9939]

This is open source stuff, right?

Hmm imagine if Apple got their hands on this... 10.5 anybody?

[thePurpleGiant]

Is there a place to donate a few bucks to this cause? If many people donated money, perhaps there could be a slight cash incentive for developers to work on this?

[olePigeon]

Only way I'd buy an emulator is if the graphics were offloaded to the video card, and not emulated.

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by reader50:
Updates and clarifications...

They are not using Bochs for the binary emulation. Instead, they are using QEMU which is much faster than Bochs.

Nice! I had checked earlier, and they had said they were going to use Bochs - guess they've changed their plans. I'm getting kind of excited about this now!

[Link]

Originally posted by olePigeon:
Only way I'd buy an emulator is if the graphics were offloaded to the video card, and not emulated.

This could be interesting... I hope they feel the same way .

[RooneyX]

Originally posted by olePigeon:
Only way I'd buy an emulator is if the graphics were offloaded to the video card, and not emulated.

http://darwine.sourceforge.net/todo.php

Developer: Add an Aqua Driver so that Wine will act as Mac users would expect.


Instead of speculation about this how about some people join the project and report on the progress in the forum? Let's kill that bi@tch called VPC.

[clod]

Looks like this project has some potential.

[macvillage.net]

Originally posted by MacGorilla:
Wine Is Not an Emulator. Its a port of windows apis to Linux. Its tied to the x86 platform, otherwise you'd have to emulate the x86 libraries, which is why it defeats the purpose. There is no wine for ppc linux for this very reason.

I admire your goals, though. Good luck.

As far as I heard, it would be nearly impossible.

And if it were done, it would be way to slow for actual use.

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by macvillage.net:
As far as I heard, it would be nearly impossible.

And if it were done, it would be way to slow for actual use.

Well, if you couple it with a real emulator (a good one, not crap like Bochs), it is certainly possible - you would get performance probably similar to running Lindows in VPC.

[moonmonkey]

Originally posted by olePigeon:
Only way I'd buy an emulator is if the graphics were offloaded to the video card, and not emulated.

Like the new version of RealPC was meant to do

[starman]

I'd rather emulate the Atari 800 .

Mike

[mitchell_pgh]

The WINE people are not trying to get every application over to Linux... they are being VERY realistic. They are trying for the major applications and then moving to more specific applications.

I think something like this would be amazing for OS X as it could let potential "switchers" move over to OS X with less software issues. It could also help for people that have that "ONE" application that simply isn't supported under OS X.

I wonder if Apple would ever install WINE in their base install? Probably not, but it's nice to dream.

[mitchell_pgh]

Originally posted by Sven G:
... But this, surely, looks almost exactly how Virtual PC should work (i.e., in rootless mode, essentially):



It's a potentially great project (WINE/Bochs+), also being open source: maybe even a stimulating challenge to Microsoft's proprietary Virtual PC, who knows - if it's feasible in a reasonable amount of time...

That screen shot makes me sick... How do people work on that all day long?