Wine Application Database

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[edit] Introduction

The Application database is the official list of programs and how well they work under Wine.

The Wine Application Database now contains a very large compilation of software that has been tried on Wine. Many programs can be run with minor adjustments to the configuration of Wine. It is the first place to look and post when you have problems or are considering some software for Wine. A number of entries are in need of Maintainers or Supermaintainers to assist with testing each release of Wine. By posting bug reports when there has been a regression, the developers can continue to improve wine.

The database has been regularly improved and has grown into a powerful tool. Maintainers and users now have the ability to rate each wine version as

  • Platinum. (Software will install and run without requiring any extra steps, tricks or workarounds)
  • Gold (Working in all aspects)
  • Silver (Working well)
  • Bronze (Mostly Usable)
  • Garbage (It don't fly too well)

The Application Database now works closely with Bugzilla, the bug reporting tool.

T. Lambregts gave a status update in Nov 2006]: We now have over 500 individuals who have signed up to be maintainer of an applications. these maintainers are spread out over 794 entries in the AppDB. [...] there is a lot of work to be done [...] administrating [...]. even with all the maintainers and administrators it seems we are always a couple of days behind checking new application submissions and test results.


Current active Administrators are [Nov 06]:

  • Chris Morgan (In charge of cvs commits)
  • Tony Lambregts (me)
  • Louis Lenders
  • Alexander Nicolaysen Sornes
  • Killertux
  • Molle Bestefich
  • Jan Zerebecki
  • Nick Law

We can always use more help [...] If you know php and would like to help out you can download the source http://www.winehq.org/site/cvs

There are lots of features that would enhance the AppDB please have a look at the wiki and feel free to add other stuff that you think would be good to have. http://wiki.winehq.org/AppdbInfo


The Application Database is essential to the development of Wine. The developers are unable to test every Windows application to see if anything breaks as Wine continues to move forward. They depend upon your tests of your favorite software and need you to report the bugs you find. Only then they can work with you to fix them. If you can promptly report breakages, they can get fixed quickly. If you are able to spend the little time required to find the patch which caused the problem using Wine Regression Testing, it will get fixed much, much faster. A developer takes pride in his work and if you respectfully point out that his patch has affected your program, you will get his attention, and as seen from the mailing lists, a prompt fix is not uncommon.

[edit] Maintainers

As the Appdb help file explains: Maintainers are crucial to the usefulness of the AppDB as they ensure that information is kept up-to-date. With the large number of applications and versions present in the AppDB today it would be a difficult task for the small number of AppDB admins to try to perform this task.

  • Please consider submitting your results for this software.
Become a Maintainer
Please consider volunteering to be an additional Maintainer for this software.

Regularly Submitting results for installing and running on the latest version of Wine makes a big difference for others considering using Wine. By looking at how well the software runs others can be encouraged to try it themselves and together you can make progress in finding workarounds. By testing the software you will also notice when something breaks and when you make a bug report, the bugzilla team will often point it out to the person who broke it. If you are slightly more technically minded, you are able to regularly compile wine and test it before each fortnightly release then you will catch breakages before each wine release.

  • Who can be a Maintainer? - anyone. no programming experience required.
  • What is required of a Maintainer? - not much, but you do make a real difference.

A big advantage of being a maintainer is that as you quickly become familiar with installing and using wine with your software, you can have a direct hand in improving wine and your software. Many times you will find very handy tips posted by others and by posting a summary many benefit from your work. When you are asked a question you don't know, simply post in the wine-users forum and perhaps someone can help.

Just by being there, you make a difference. A maintainer quickly tests each monthly release of wine, and adds to the application database a rating of how good it runs.. gold/silver/bronze or garbage. Wine is constantly being improved, and occasionally something breaks. When you do spot a breakage, file a bug in bugzilla and if you want to try and fix it you can then post to the wine-devel mailing list for advice. However, if you have a little spare time (usually about 2 hours, in between doing other things) regression testing allows you to identify which patch caused the break. By filling out a bugzilla report, posting the name of the software, and the patch which broke it to the wine-devel mailing list, the developer who broke it can have a look at fixing it.

  • This often results in very quick fixes.


Further Reading

[edit] Ratings

How the software runs on wine is rated by Maintainers and users. http://appdb.winehq.org/browse_by_rating.php Gold means that it works flawlessly with some workarounds. Platinum means it just works fine.


[edit] Mailing List Comments

  • [Fab 07] A few reported the Application Database was running slow. J. Newman: First off, the web server and smtp server for winehq.org are all on the same box. WineHQ just gets hammered with spam some days. All that spam load takes I/O away from mysql. I've updated the mail daemon to go into a queue only mode when the load average gets to high. Secondly, for those who admin the appdb. Some pages send out email. The default settings for PHP when sending mail are very slow. I changed a setting in PHP to speed that up.
  • D. Kegel [Jul 06]: links in Google to the appdb are of the form http://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?appId=86 This no longer works. The new format appears to be http://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?iAppId=86. C. Morgan: This is in progress. I'll take care of it right now[...] wine archive
  • [Oct 05] A user asked how long would does it take for new applications to be entered? J. Ernst pointed out that usually it takes a couple of days: I'm one of the AppDB maintainer. We have been a little bit busy [...] The applications you submitted (thank you for that) will be reviewed in the next 24 hours...
  • [July 05] changes to bug handling: You can now link a bug with a version Wine Archive
  • J. Ernst [July 05]: people [should be] aware that screenshot that contains things like photos (games, etc.) should be compressed using jpeg and that other files (normal apps) should better be compressed using png (as it won't blur the text).

[edit] Scripting Installs based upon the Application Database

In a discussion about third party tools helping users to instals software by automating the modifying the standard wine setup and by using Windows Dlls, several points were noted. Some developers concerns were centered on this potentially hindering the development of Wine.

One promoted: having list of 'hacks' stored in 'unified' manner within repository simplifies access to 'fixups' for outstanding issues. At least they will be at one place (similar to AppDB now).

D. Kegel: Pragmatically, I understand where you're coming from. What's missing is for you to declare things like:

  • My goal in writing Winebot is to help Wine succeed
  • I pledge to use only the bare minimum of native DLLs in any Winebot recipe
  • I pledge to remove native DLLs from [...] recipes as soon as Wine fixes the bugs that keep Wine's DLLs from being sufficient for that app
  • I will report bugs to the Wine project in the course of working on [my third party tool]
  • I will help Wine by writing not just [tool] recipes, but also basic application regression test scripts

That last one especially would endear you to the Wine community.[June wine devel 2007] Bold text

[edit] Troubleshooting the Application Database

[edit] The Database doesnt list my Software

If your software or version is not in the application database, please test it with wine and submit it to the list. Even better, list yourself as a maintainer and help make a real difference with wine.

"Further Reading'

[edit] My Software is no longer listed

A user reported: I submitted Fruity Loop 7 to the AppDB and it got accepted and then after a little while it got deleted. I don't know why as the notification did not give a reason

D. Kegel [July 07 wine user] We had some gremlins deleting stuff from the appdb, maybe you got hit. When was this?

A Maintainer wrote [Dec 07 wine devel] Is it standard practice to remove all old versions of a program except for the most recent?

A. Sornes: That's correct. If a version is not usable anymore (because it connects to a server etc.) it can be made obsolete so votes will be moved to a usable one. We are in the process of adding an un-delete system to the AppDB so issues like the recent ones can be fixed.

[edit] New Versions of Wine

A developer asked [Feb 07]: Does someone manually add new versions to bugzilla or is it done automatically?

Ben: It's done manually by an admin.

[edit] Adding Untested Software

A developer questioned why he could not add software which he had not tested. A. Sones [Mar 07 wine-devel] in the past, there were some applications in the database without test results. This led to users asking questions about what was wrong, or reporting them (correctly) as errors and prompting their deletion.

Finding out which applications work with Wine is the only purpose of the AppDB, and people will lose the overview if we make it a general application database. Sure, we have download browsers and links to patches etc., but that is only supplementary information. Besides, submitting applications that no one maintains means the data will become outdated pretty soon. If people were to expect every application in the world being in the database, they would also expect the information to be up to date at all times.

[edit] File Paths

A user noticed that when he typed a path, it didnt display the '/' charactor: If I enter something like Windows\system, it shows up fine in the preview, but when it actually goes to the real page it shows as Windowssystem

Andrew Neil Ramage pointed out the solution: Sounds like a Unix/Linux feature where the backslash is used for escape codes, so you should use double backslashes. eg, C:\\Some\\Directory\\File [The user reported this was the answer] Wine Archive

[edit] Posting Screen Shots

Screenshots are an excellent way to show developers what happens on Wine. A comparison with a Windows screenshot can often speak volumes.

There is a currently [July 05] an issue with large screenshots, where the upload will fail. The developers are aware of this and are working toward a fix. J. Ernst: It's [currently] impossible to send a file of 700k J. Newman [July 05]: I've increased the max upload size. [But the discussion found there was another apparent limitation that required some more troubleshooting] Wine Archive

A user [July 05]: I just looked at some screenshots I sent in for Steam: http://appdb.winehq.org/screenshots.php?appId=1163&versionId= (the HL Multiplayer Shot.) If you look at it, you'll notice the color depth is screwed up. What's going on?

C. Morgan: Yes. This is likely due to the older version of GD that we have on the server. We are anxiously awaiting an upgrade to a newer version :-)

[edit] Posting the Terminal Output

When you run your program from the command line, sometimes Wine reports important error messages. When making a bug report, add an attachment with the terminal output, noting the version of Wine that you used.

A. English [Aug 07 wine bug 9494]: To get full terminal output, run your app like this: 

$ wine foo.exe &> /tmp/output.txt

Then attach (do not paste) /tmp/output.txt.

[edit] Website Issues

[edit] Opera Support

[Bug 8928] Opera reports: "Sorry, Opera is not yet supported by Xinha."

This was an unfortunate side affect of using Xinha.


C. Morgan explained: Xinha has no support for Opera. There isn't much we can do until Xinha adds this support or we replace Xinha with something similar that has Opera support. I upgrade Xinha regularly to keep up with the latest release so this issue should go away in the future when the next Xinha release comes out and we upgrade to it.

[edit] Searching

A user reported searching difficulties searching the appdb [wine bug9541 Sept 07].

J: Yes, you need to enable javascript for both winehq.com and google.com. Another solution would be nice(sending only "searchtext" and "site:appdb.winehq.org" to google and getting back the result...)

[edit] Wine Application Database Patches

A developer asked [May 06]:Is there any way to expedite the patch submission process. I submitted a patch to wine-patches quite a while ago for the AppDB TestResulsts.php page as outlined in bug 5155.

Chris Morgan: Was did it have "AppDB" at the front of the subject? Did you copy me on it?

He then checked and applied the patch wine archive

Another developer queried why his patch wasn't applied. C. Morgan [May 06]: This doesn't apply cleanly after EA Durbin's patch to the same file. wine archive

[edit] Wine Application Database Links


  • wine maintainer's notes [experimental]: 
       Wine Appdb Maintainers Notes
Retrieved from "http://wiki.jswindle.com/index.php/Wine_Application_Database"
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