Sommelier Core Scripts

This repository contains the sommelier script which helps you put a Windows application in a snap. This is a wrapper script which runs when your snap starts. It initializes and tweaks Wine, installs your application and runs it.

Note: many Wine snaps were originally built by copying the sommelier script and modifying it. This made it hard to maintain and update that script. The goal of this repository is to create a single version of the sommelier script which can be used by every snapped Wine application without modification. Is this script not working for your application? Please let me know! Contributions are welcome!

Pros:

• Uses Wine from the wine-platform snaps to reduce the size of your snap.
• Uses the gnome-3-28 extension for initializing all the generic desktop stuff.
• Includes the "Light" theme from Zhiyi Zhang so Windows applications look less ugly.
• Updates the Wine prefix every time Wine changes. Can upgrade a 32-bit Wine prefix to 64-bit.
• Reinstalls the Windows app every time the snap version changes.
• Reconfigures Wine every time the snap revision or the Wine version changes.
• Users can run myapp.wine to run arbitrary applications inside this snap.
• Users can run myapp.winetricks to modify the Wine environment.

How to use

Step by step

1. Add the following part to your snapcraft.yaml:

   parts:
     sommelier-core:
       plugin: make
       source: https://github.com/snapcrafters/sommelier-core.git
       source-branch: "1.0"

2. Add the following plug definitions:

   plugs:
     wine-runtime:
       interface: content
       target: $SNAP/wine-runtime
       default-provider: wine-platform-runtime
     wine-5-stable: # number must match the number in default-provider
       interface: content
       target: $SNAP/wine-platform
       default-provider: wine-platform-5-stable # must be a valid snap

   • WINE version snaps are named wine-platform-[version]-[branch] where:
     • Version is one of 4, 5, or 6
       • And branch is one of stable, staging, or devel
     • Or, version is 3 and branch is stable
   • There is only one WINE runtime snap, which is named wine-platform-runtime.
3. Add the following apps:

   apps:
     my-windows-app:
       extensions: [gnome-3-28]
       command: bin/sommelier run-exe
       environment:
         RUN_EXE: C:\path\to\installed\executable.exe
         INSTALL_URL: http://example.com/installer.exe
         INSTALL_FLAGS: /silent # optional commandline flags to pass to the installer
       plugs: # change these as required
       - home
       - network
       - network-bind
       - removable-media
     wine:
       extensions: [gnome-3-28]
       command: bin/sommelier
       plugs:
         - home
         - network
     winetricks:
       extensions: [gnome-3-28]
       command: bin/sommelier winetricks
       plugs:
         - home
         - network

Example Snaps

See the following snaps for complete examples of how to use sommelier-core.

• PhotoScape snap
  Re-distributable installer bundled within packaging source
• Bridge Designer snap
  Re-distributable installer bundled within packaging source
• TrackMania Nations Forever snap
  Non re-distributable installer fetched during snap runtime
• XNote Stopwatch snap
  Portable application, non re-distributable executable fetched during snap runtime
• GRC's DNS Benchmark snap
  Portable application, re-distributable executable fetched during snap buildtime

Variables

• TRICKS: A space-separated list of winetricks to run before installing the application. For example, the trick dxvk installs and configures the Vulkan-based translation layer for Direct3D 9/10/11. If you're not sure which tricks your application needs, take a look at the test results on Wine AppDB or the Lutris install scripts. Those often mention the required tricks.

  Note: You can experiment with different tricks yourself by building and installing your snap, and then running myapp.winetricks to install additional tricks. After that, run myapp again and see if everything works.

  Run myapp.winetricks list-all to see all available tricks. Wine errors can help you figure out which tricks are needed. Run export WINEDEBUG=err+all before running your snap to see them.

• INSTALL_URL: URL to publicly available installer. Sommelier will download this installer and execute it in Wine.

  Note: if the installer is not publicly downloadable, you can alternatively include the installer in the snap and use the INSTALL_EXE environment variable to specify the absolute path to the installation exe. Using INSTALL_URL is preferred, however, because many installers have licenses that prevent third-party distribution. Example: INSTALL_PATH: "$SNAP/PhotoScapeSetup_V3.7.exe"

• INSTALL_FLAGS: Windows-style CLI flags to pass to the installer. Many installers have CLI flags for silent installation, for example.

  Note: Running Universal Silent Switch Finder on a Windows machine can help you find these flags. This app does not seem to function correctly in Wine.

• RUN_EXE: Path to the installed Windows application to run. This accepts both unix paths and Windows paths such as "C:/Program Files (x86)/TmNationsForever/TmForever.exe"

• WINEDLLOVERRIDES: Override DLL loading behavior: configure Wine to choose between native and builtin DLLs. See DLL Overrides and WINEDLLOVERRIDES docs for more information. Example: "mscoree,mshtml="

• WINEESYNC: set to 1 to enable esync. This can increase performance for some games, especially ones that rely heavily on the CPU. See esync docs for more information.

• WINEARCH: Wine will start an 64-bit environment by default. This runs both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows binaries. Some 32-bit applications, however, have issues when you run them in 64-bit Wine. For these applications, set WINEARCH to win32 to use a 32-bit-only environment.

• SOMMELIER_NO_THEME: Use this variable to disable the theme. Some Java 1.6 applications crash when you apply a theme. This should be added with value 1 in consumer snaps that are using WINE 9.x and above.

• SOMMELIER_KEEP_CWD: Use this variable when sommelier should not change the working directory before executing the app. This is useful if your app can take filenames as arguments and you want relative filenames to work. Note: some Windows apps only work when the working directory is their application directory.

Compatibility

This repository uses branches for stable and backwards-compatible releases. For example, all updates to the "1.0" branch of this repository will be backwards compatible. Set the source-branch property of the sommelier part in your snapcraft.yaml file to use a stable version.

parts:
  sommelier:
    plugin: make
    source: https://github.com/snapcrafters/sommelier-core.git
    source-branch: "1.0"

Development and debugging variables

• SOMMELIER_DEBUG: Enable bash tracing for the sommelier script and time how long sommelier runs before starting the application.
• SOMMELIER_STRICT: Make sommelier exit when an unset variable is used. This might be useful to find bugs in sommelier.

License

• The Light theme is released under the GNU Lesser General Public License 2.1+.
• All other content is released under the MIT license.