Dependencies

These are packages which play a crucial role in Bottles, providing one or more dependencies, necessary to make the Windows software to work, increasing the compatibility level of the bottles.

What is a dependency?

Like said before, a dependency is a package which is necessary to make the Windows software to work properly, increasing the compatibility level of the bottles.

We can compare this to the classic packages used by Linux distributions, let’s make an example: imagine installing a program in your distribution of choice, this will depend by other packages (dependencies) as without these it will not be able to work at its best way or at all.

So in Bottles (generally WINE) it’s most the same: when you install a Windows program, it will depend by other packages (dependencies) to make it work properly.

How Bottles handles dependencies?

Bottles has its own independent dependencies manager which takes care of installation (in multiple ways) and removal.

Our dependencies system is based on a public repository, which is a list of manifests in YAML format with a specific set of instructions to handle the package, and an index of all the packages available on it.

When you start Bottles, it will download the dependencies index from the repository and list them in your bottle’s Dependencies view. When you require a dependency, it will download the specific manifest and execute the instructions to install it.

Different installation methods

Dependencies are not all installed in the same way, some can be installed by simply running the executable, while others will require more complex steps such as extracting a single file from a Windows Cabinet, registering a new override, …

The following example shows how the dirac dependency is installed:

Name: dirac 
Description: The Dirac directshow filter v1.0.2
Provider: Dirac
License: GPLv2
License_url: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html
Dependencies: []
Steps:
- action: install_exe
  file_name: DiracDirectShowFilter-1.0.2.exe
  url: https://downloads.sourceforge.net/dirac/DiracDirectShowFilter-1.0.2.exe
  rename: DiracDirectShowFilter-1.0.2.exe
  arguments: []
  file_checksum: 6bb4fd577ff881f317a9361d986907c4

It is a very simple installation, as you can see, it has only one step, the install_exe action, which will just download the file and run it. Let’s see a more complex example like dotnet48:

Name: dotnet48
Description: Microsoft .NET Framework 4.8
Provider: Microsoft
License: Microsoft EULA
License_url: https://www.microsoft.com/web/webpi/eula/net_library_eula_enu.htm
Dependencies: 
  - dotnet40
  
Steps:
- action: uninstall
  file_name: Wine Mono

- action: set_windows
  version: win7
  
- action: install_exe
  environment: 
    WINEDLLOVERRIDES: fusion=b
  file_name: ndp48-x86-x64-allos-enu.exe
  url: https://download.visualstudio.microsoft.com/download/pr/7afca223-55d2-470a-8edc-6a1739ae3252/abd170b4b0ec15ad0222a809b761a036/ndp48-x86-x64-allos-enu.exe
  rename: dotnet48.exe
  file_checksum: 4e7a8586d06ce1f8cebac0d4bc379e16
  arguments: /sfxlang:1027 /q /norestart

- action: set_windows
  version: win10

- action: override_dll
  dll: mscoree
  type: native

Here we have five steps with different actions:

• uninstall: will uninstall the Wine Mono package as this dependency will replace it
• set_windows: will set the Wine environment to Windows 7, as the dependency will fail on different versions of Windows
• install_exe: will download the file and run it
• set_windows: will set the Wine environment back to Windows 10 (the default one in Bottles)
• override_dll: will override the mscoree DLL to native so the program will find it

You can see that the install_exe action has multiple keys:

• environment: will inject an environment variable registering the fusion DLL override only for the installation process
• arguments: these are the arguments to be passed to the executable to make it silent and not ask for any input and set the default language

Maybe you noticed that this manifest also fill the Dependencies key, this is because dependencies can also depend on other dependencies, so the Dependencies key is a list of dependencies which should be installed before this one.

There are also more complex actions but we will not cover them here, refer to the Actions page for more information.