Build Wine from source with CrossOver patches. This allows you to run game launchers (e.g. Steam) and productivity software that do not work properly on mainline Wine.
CXBuilder is tested on CrossOver 24 (which is based on Wine 9.0), and it is optimized for use with Apple Silicon-based Macs. However, it works on Intel Macs too, and support for Linux is in progress. It essentially compiles the Wine from the open-source CrossOver source distributions, with various patches applied to improve graphics performance.
If you're looking for an easier setup experience and are okay with running an older version of Wine, consider Whisky. Alternatively, purchase a CrossOver license for the best, most user-friendly experience and to support the developers of Wine.
Instead of running CXBuilder yourself, you can download a prebuilt image from the "Releases" tab. These builds are available for Intel and Apple Silicon macOS devices.
The entirety of CXBuilder is included within cxbuilder.sh; you can clone this repository to download the script, or download CXBuilder directly with:
curl -O "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/101arrowz/cxbuilder/master/cxbuilder.sh" && chmod +x cxbuilder.shUse ./cxbuilder.sh -h to see the options. Here is an example of the output:
$ ./cxbuilder.sh -h
./cxbuilder.sh [-v] [-x] [--wine dir] [--gptk dir] [--dxvk dir] [--no-deps]
[--rebuild] [--no-clean] [--out dest_dir] [source_dir]
Arguments:
-h, --help Prints this help message and exits
-v, --verbose Enables verbose logging of build commands and results
-x, --no-prompt Run non-interactively
-w, --wine Uses the Wine sources from the specified directory.
CXBuilder is designed specifically to work with the
Wine sources provided with the open-source distribution
of CrossOver, which include various "hacks" to make
software that breaks with mainline Wine work anyway.
However, CXBuilder should work the original Wine too,
or any fork. Defaults to [source_dir]/wine.
--no-gptk Disable use of Direct3D DLLs from Apple's Game Porting
Toolkit (GPTk). GPTk is supported only on Apple Silicon
Macs. GPTk is disabled by default on all other devices.
--gptk dir Uses the Game Porting Toolkit from the specified
directory. This should have a redist/ subdirectory with
Apple's proprietary Direct3D -> Metal translation
layer libraries inside. Defaults to [source_dir]/gptk.
--no-dxvk Disables the use of Direct3D DLLs from DXVK. Note that
if GPTk is enabled, DXVK will only be used for 32-bit
software (as GPTk does not support 32-bit Direct3D).
--dxvk dir Uses the DXVK build from the specified directory. This
should have x32/ and x64/ subdirectories with Direct3D
DLLs. Note that if both GPTk and DXVK are enabled, GPTk
will take priority (i.e. only the x32/ DLLs from DXVK
will be used). Defaults to [source_dir]/dxvk.
--no-deps Disables the built-in dependency fetcher. Setting this
flag makes it possible to use custom builds of Wine
dependencies, rather than pre-built versions from the
Homebrew project; however, you will need to configure
the static and dynamic linker flags manually to point
to the correct locations of your dependencies. This
is not necessary for most builds and can lead to many
headaches if misused; the built-in dependency fetcher
is well-tested and does not install anything globally
into your system (not even Homebrew!)
-r, --rebuild Forcibly rebuilds Wine from source, ignoring cached or
partially built results. This option will need to be
specified after updating compiler/linker flags but
should generally be avoided otherwise.
-d, --no-clean Skips cleaning the build cache from dest_dir after a
build completes. Useful for debugging broken builds
without having to rebuild from source each time, but
should be unnecessary otherwise.
-o, --out dest_dir Where to generate the final Wine build. This directory
will contain a similar structure to /usr/local (and
that is indeed a valid value for this argument) after
the build completes. However, the build can be placed
anywhere on your system and may be moved around freely
afterwards, so long as relative symlinks are preserved.
Defaults to [source_dir]/build.
source_dir The directory in which the source files are present.
It is not necessary to use this directory, but it can
be used to create a build with only one argument.If you are unfamiliar with building C programs, consider using the pre-built releases rather than building from source using the script directly.
Game Porting Toolkit, and specifically its D3DMetal framework, does not provide 32-bit Direct3D DLLs; therefore, to run most 32-bit games, you would need to use DXVK. By default, CXBuilder bakes the DXVK you provide into your Wine build itself, meaning you won't need to install it into each $WINEPREFIX separately. If you use both --gptk and --dxvk, CXBuilder will bake DXVK for 32-bit Direct3D and D3DMetal for 64-bit Direct3D.
Note that there are limitations on the builds of DXVK you can use on different platforms. Linux is relatively unrestricted, but macOS is much trickier; there are some notes about it further down. The TL;DR is, you should most likely use the latest release of DXVK-macOS.
If you're using a Mac with a Retina display, you will likely want to configure Wine to recognize that. To do this, navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wine\Mac Driver in the registry (you may need to create the Mac Driver key if it does not exist). Add the key RetinaMode into Mac Driver; set its value to be the string Y. After restarting Wine, you'll want to double your DPI scaling; typically, you'd do this by running winecfg.exe, navigating to the Graphics pane, and changing your DPI from 96 to 192. Note that Retina mode may break certain games.
There are some small patches to CrossOver in the patches/ subdirectory that are applied only when creating the builds in the "Releases" tab. These are meant mainly to optimize the pre-built images for common use-cases.
The cxbuilder.sh script does not use or search for these by default, and it is not recommended to apply them to your own CrossOver Wine source tree without understanding what they do.
Past versions of CrossOver used a custom build of Clang with a special wine32 target to support both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows software in the same WINEPREFIX. As of Wine 9.0, it is no longer necessary to use a custom build of Clang for this, thanks to the new experimental WOW64 runtime within Wine. Thus CodeWeavers have removed their modified LLVM sources from their open-source releases.
Wine's Vulkan support on macOS goes through MoltenVK, a library that translates Vulkan calls into Metal. Unfortunately, MoltenVK supports only a subset of the Vulkan 1.2 standard, while modern versions of DXVK require Vulkan 1.3 or later. DXVK has also never officially supported macOS, and as a result mainline DXVK crashes immediately on most Macs. Altogether this means you will need to install a patched, old version of DXVK in order to run 32-bit Direct3D games.
Your best bet is using DXVK-macOS; if you choose to install it yourself, you should only copy x32/d3d10core.dll and x32/d3d11.dll into your windows/syswow64 folder, and apply the corresponding DLL overrides. If you prefer DXVK to D3DMetal (the Direct3D translation layer supplied by Apple's Game Porting Toolkit), or would like to compare the two, you can also copy x64/d3d10core.dll and x64/d3d11.dll into windows/system32. However, this would break by default if you built Wine with GPTk due to Wine's DLL override behavior.
The fix is to re-sign a version of the dxgi.dll built by Wine for wined3d (NOT the version supplied by D3DMetal) to make it appear as though it were not built by Wine, and copy that into your WINEPREFIX under C:\Windows\System32. (Essentially the bytes 0x40-0x60 must be changed from their initial value of "Wine builtin DLL" to something else). CXBuilder has support planned for simultaneous DXVK and D3DMetal integration into a single Wine build, with the backend configurable at runtime, by applying such a patch to wined3d's dxgi.dll. However, if you'd like to use both at the same time in your personal Wine build, or if you'd prefer to build things by hand, make sure to follow these steps.
CXBuilder is a single POSIX-compliant shell script cxbuilder.sh. It depends on various non-POSIX tools being installed, depending upon the operating system, but avoids these whenever possible. If it does not work on your system, please file an issue!
CXBuilder is licensed under the LGPL v3.0, as it is a derivative work of the LGPL-licensed CrossOver Wine subproject (which itself is a derivative work of Wine).
Please note that the game-porting-toolkit subdirectory contains proprietary software from Apple, and is not covered under this license. Apple's Game Porting Toolkit is an optional plugin for this software.