Ubuntu Wine/Wine Staging Build Script (build-multilib-wine)
Discussion
Monolithic BASH script to build multilib Wine / Wine Staging, from source, on Ubuntu(tm) - using dual Chroot Environments. Ubuntu 16.04 Xenial (or newer) is a hard requirement for the Chroot Environments.
The Ubuntu(tm) / Debian distributions have chosen to remove most of the i386 multilib development libraries from their 64-bit repositories (post the Ubuntu 10.04 release?) Wine requires a complete multilib build/development environment to be built from Source. The vast majority of Windows binaries are still 32-bit (including all legacy applications).
It appears, from the WineHQ forums, that Ubuntu/Wine users meet a bit a brick wall if they want to apply non-official patches to Wine. Building multilib Wine from source - without the necessary 32-bit development libraries - is quite tricky!
To overcome the problem of building Wine from Source on a modern Ubuntu(tm) release requires access to a true 32-bit Ubuntu system and repositories on a 64-bit System. This is because multilib Wine is effectively built/compiled in 2 cycles on a 64-bit System: 32-bit and 64-bit respectively.
As Ubuntu(tm) has removed the necessary 32-bit development libraries, from the 64-bit repositories, it is necessary to use a more "creative build process" to workaround this. The main available and solutions that can be used are:
- build multilib Wine natively on a 64-bit Ubuntu(tm) system
- This works - but 32-bit support will not be fully functional in the Wine build - due to a number of critical development libraries that will be missing.
- build multilib Wine on a 64-bit Ubuntu(tm) using a 32-bit Chroot
- Performant, doesn't pollute the host system with unnecessary development libraries, no missing 32-bit development libraries, Chroot images can be minimal in size and thereby use the least possible disk space.
- build multilib Wine on 64-bit Ubuntu(tm) using a 32-bit LXC (Linux Container)
- Performant, doesn't need to pollute the host system with unnecessary development libraries (if using dual architecture containers), no missing 32-bit development libraries. LXC image can be relatively small, but can be difficult to setup (steep learning curve).
- build multilib Wine on 64-bit Ubuntu(tm) using a Virtual Machine with a 32-bit Ubuntu(tm) image (VM - e.g. VirtualBox)
- Overhead (CPU), hard to link the 32-bit Wine build to the native 64-bit Wine build, disk usage hog, not a very practical solution!
Also see: https://wiki.winehq.org/Building_Wine
Downloading
If you chose to download the build-multilib-wine script directly from Github (rather than cloning the Git repository)... When viewing the script file ensure you click the RAW button at the top of the file... Otherwise when you save the webpage, with your Web Browser, you will literally download that html Github webpage and not the bare BASH script, text file!
Usage
Install the script in your user's PATH. The script has a detailed help page with the all the supported options:
build_multilib_wine.sh help
An optional global configuration file is used by, the build script, to specify various global options, Wine/Wine Staging version to build, logging options, colourised output, etc. A command exists to dump a default configuration file - to the /etc/... directory. This can then be edited to suit the users requirements.
At present the script has some Environment variables that can be overridden to change some advanced options:
WINE_CONFIG_OPTIONS="-without-hal --without-v4l --without-oss"
WINE_CFLAGS="-march=native -mtune=native"
WINE_MAKE_OPTIONS="-j${THREADS}"
Typically one of more of these variables would be set (if required) in the global configuration file.
All patches from the Wine Staging patch-set are applied by default (except for a small number - that are patched separately from the Wine Staging patch install script). However any number of the Wine Staging (sub-)patch-sets can be selectively disabled. Again this is only possible via overriding Environment variables - typically in the global configuration file.
User patches can applied - any number of directories, containing patch files, can be specified. Thereby allowing a custom Wine version to be built from Source.
Schroot setup and the build process can be optionally logged using a separate thread (via FIFO pipe). Optionally on completion of the selected build phases, or Schroot operations - the log file can be automatically compressed (all the main Linux compressors are supported). Log files and stdout console output can be colourised according to user preference.
At present the build script carefully installs all necessary development libraries to build Wine or Wine Staging from Source. But these libraries are only installed in the Chroot Environments. There is no attempt to install necessary runtime dependencies (mainly 32-bit libraries) on the Host Ubuntu(tm) System. This will be added in at a later stage (perhaps a small helper script). This isn't a package builder! So it's recommended to install one the WineHQ official packages (winehq-devel or winehq-staging) alongside your usage of this script... These packages will pull in the necessary runtime library dependencies, plus install package icons and desktop files.
Closing Notes
I should point out I'm a Gentoo user - only an occasional Ubuntu user... So bear that in mind if the script makes some misassumptions about the Debian Schroot utility or Debian package management! Pull requests happily received!