Wine isn't perfect, and many Windows applications still don't run without bugs under Wine (but then, many of them don't run without bugs under native Windows either!). To make it easier for people to track down the causes behind each bug, Wine provides a number of debug channels that you can tap into.
Each debug channel, when activated, will trigger logging messages to be displayed to the console where you invoked wine. From there you can redirect the messages to a file and examine it at your leisure. But be forewarned! Some debug channels can generate incredible volumes of log messages. Among the most prolific offenders are relay which spits out a log message every time a win32 function is called, win which tracks windows message passing, and of course all which is an alias for every single debug channel that exists. For a complex application, your debug logs can easily top 1 MB and higher. A relay trace can often generate more than 10 MB of log messages, depending on how long you run the application. Logging does slow down Wine quite a bit, so don't use --debugmsg unless you really do want log files.
Within each debug channel, you can further specify a message class, to filter out the different severities of errors. The four message classes are: trace, fixme, warn, err.
To turn on a debug channel, use the form class+channel. To turn it off, use class-channel. To list more than one channel in the same --debugmsg option, separate them with commas. For example, to request warn class messages in the heap debug channel, you could invoke wine like this:
$ wine --debugmsg warn+heap program_name |
If you leave off the message class, wine will display messages from all four classes for that channel:
$ wine --debugmsg +heap program_name |
If you wanted to see log messages for everything except the relay channel, you might do something like this:
$ wine --debugmsg +all,-relay program_name |
Here is a master list of all the debug channels and classes in Wine. More channels might be added to (or subtracted from) later versions.
all accel advapi animate aspi atom avifile bitblt bitmap caret cdrom class clipboard clipping combo comboex comm commctrl commdlg console crtdll cursor datetime dc ddeml ddraw debug debugstr delayhlp dialog dinput dll dosfs dosmem dplay driver dsound edit elfdll enhmetafile event exec file fixup font gdi global graphics header heap hook hotkey icmp icon imagehlp imagelist imm int int10 int16 int17 int19 int21 int31 io ipaddress joystick key keyboard ldt listbox listview local mci mcianim mciavi mcicda mcimidi mciwave mdi menu message metafile midi mmaux mmio mmsys mmtime module monthcal mpr msacm msg msvideo nativefont nonclient ntdll odbc ole opengl pager palette pidl print process profile progress prop propsheet psapi psdrv ras rebar reg region relay resource richedit scroll segment seh selector sendmsg server setupapi setupx shell snoop sound static statusbar storage stress string syscolor system tab tape tapi task text thread thunk timer toolbar toolhelp tooltips trackbar treeview ttydrv tweak typelib updown ver virtual vxd wave win win16drv win32 wing wininet winsock winspool wnet x11 x11drv |
For more details about debug channels, check out the The Wine Developer's Guide.
By default, wine runs applications on your regular desktop. Wine application windows intermingle with native X11 applications. Windows overlap each other, and you can resize them in relation to each other. Normally, when you minimize Wine windows, they collapse into a small icon at the lower left corner of your desktop, circumventing the behavior of your other non-Wine windows. However, if you're running in --managed mode, your Wine applications will minimize just like your other windows.
Sometimes, you may want to restrict Wine windows to a smaller area of your desktop. This is what the --desktop option controls. Whenever you pass this option to wine, it will create a window of that size and use that as Wine's desktop instead of borrowing the regular desktop space. Wine will then place the application window inside the new desktop window. If you minimize the application, it will iconize to the bottom left corner of its own desktop window.
The --desktop option geometry info in the standard X11 geometry format, e.g., "640x480" for a desktop window 640 pixels wide and 480 pixels high. You can also in theory specify the coordinates of the upper left corner of the desktop window, but your window manager may choose to override that request. The following invocation would open a new 640 x 480 desktop window at coordinates (10, 25):
$ wine --desktop 640x480+10+25 foo.exe |
More commonly, you'll leave off the starting coordinates, and only use the height and width:
$ wine --desktop 640x480 foo.exe |
By default, wine will display its windows on whichever X Display you have in the $DISPLAY environment variable. Often, $DISPLAY is set to :0, which sends all windows to the primary video monitor on the current host machine.
To send windows to a different monitor on the same system, you could change :0 to a different number, for example :1 to send output to the second monitor. You can also specify other systems. If you were logged into the system alpha, but wanted wine to run on another system on the network, beta, you might use a $DISPLAY of beta:0.
You can also declare display values on the wine command line, using the --display option. The last example above might look like this:
$ wine --display="beta:0" foo.exe |