Wine implementation is closer to the Windows NT architecture, even if several subsystems are not implemented yet (remind also that 16bit support is implemented in a 32-bit Windows EXE, not as a subsystem). Here's the overall picture:
+---------------------+ \ | Windows EXE | } application +---------------------+ / +---------+ +---------+ \ | Windows | | Windows | \ application & system DLLs | DLL | | DLL | / +---------+ +---------+ / +---------+ +---------+ +-----------+ +--------+ \ | GDI32 | | USER32 | | | | | \ | DLL | | DLL | | | | Wine | \ +---------+ +---------+ | | | Server | \ core system DLLs +---------------------+ | | | | / (on the left side) | Kernel32 DLL | | Subsystem | | NT-like| / | (Win32 subsystem) | |Posix, OS/2| | Kernel | / +---------------------+ +-----------+ | | / | | +---------------------------------------+ | | | NTDLL | | | +---------------------------------------+ +--------+ +---------------------------------------+ \ | Wine executable (wine-?thread) | } unix executable +---------------------------------------+ / +---------------------------------------------------+ \ | Wine drivers | } Wine specific DLLs +---------------------------------------------------+ / +------------+ +------------+ +--------------+ \ | libc | | libX11 | | other libs | } unix shared libraries +------------+ +------------+ +--------------+ / (user space) +---------------------------------------------------+ \ | Unix kernel (Linux,*BSD,Solaris,OS/X) | } (Unix) kernel space +---------------------------------------------------+ / +---------------------------------------------------+ \ | Unix device drivers | } Unix drivers (kernel space) +---------------------------------------------------+ /
Wine must at least completely replace the "Big Three" DLLs (KERNEL/KERNEL32, GDI/GDI32, and USER/USER32), which all other DLLs are layered on top of. But since Wine is (for various reasons) leaning towards the NT way of implementing things, the NTDLL is another core DLL to be implemented in Wine, and many KERNEL32 and ADVAPI32 features will be implemented through the NTDLL.
As of today, no real subsystem (apart the Win32 one) has been implemented in Wine.
The Wine server provides the backbone for the implementation of the core DLLs. It mainly implementents inter-process synchronization and object sharing. It can be seen, from a functional point of view, as a NT kernel (even if the APIs and protocols used between Wine's DLL and the Wine server are Wine specific).
Wine uses the Unix drivers to access the various hardware pieces on the box. However, in some cases, Wine will provide a driver (in Windows sense) to a physical hardware device. This driver will be a proxy to the Unix driver (this is the case, for example, for the graphical part with X11 or SDL drivers, audio with OSS or ALSA drivers...).
All DLLs provided by Wine try to stick as much as possible
to the exported APIs from the Windows platforms. There are
rare cases where this is not the case, and have been
propertly documented (Wine DLLs export some Wine specific
APIs). Usually, those are prefixed with
__wine
.
Let's now review in greater details all of those components.
The Wine server is among the most confusing concepts in
Wine. What is its function in Wine? Well, to be brief, it
provides Inter-Process Communication (IPC),
synchronization, and process/thread management. When the
Wine server launches, it creates a Unix socket for the
current host based on (see below) your home directory's
.wine subdirectory (or wherever the
WINEPREFIX
environment variable points to)
- all Wine processes launched later connects to the Wine
server using this socket. If a Wine server was not
already running, the first Wine process will start up the
Wine server in auto-terminate mode (i.e. the Wine server
will then terminate itself once the last Wine process has
terminated).
In earlier versions of Wine the master socket mentioned
above was actually created in the configuration directory;
either your home directory's /wine
subdirectory or wherever the
WINEPREFIX
environment variable points>.
Since that might not be possible the socket is actually
created within the /tmp directory
with a name that reflects the configuration directory.
This means that there can actually be several separate
copies of the Wine server running; one per combination of
user and configuration directory. Note that you should
not have several users using the same configuration
directory at the same time; they will have different
copies of the Wine server running and this could well
lead to problems with the registry information that
they are sharing.
Every thread in each Wine process has its own request
buffer, which is shared with the Wine server. When a
thread needs to synchronize or communicate with any other
thread or process, it fills out its request buffer, then
writes a command code through the socket. The Wine server
handles the command as appropriate, while the client
thread waits for a reply. In some cases, like with the
various WaitFor???
synchronization
primitives, the server handles it by marking the client
thread as waiting and does not send it a reply before the
wait condition has been satisfied.
The Wine server itself is a single and separate Unix
process and does not have its own threading - instead, it
is built on top of a large poll()
loop that alerts the Wine server whenever anything
happens, such as a client having sent a command, or a wait
condition having been satisfied. There is thus no danger
of race conditions inside the Wine server itself - it is
often called upon to do operations that look completely
atomic to its clients.
Because the Wine server needs to manage processes, threads, shared handles, synchronization, and any related issues, all the clients' Win32 objects are also managed by the Wine server, and the clients must send requests to the Wine server whenever they need to know any Win32 object handle's associated Unix file descriptor (in which case the Wine server duplicates the file descriptor, transmits it back to the client, and leaves it to the client to close the duplicate when the client has finished with it).
This section mainly applies to builtin DLLs (DLLs provided by Wine). See section Section 7.3.4 for the details on native vs. builtin DLL handling.
Loading a Windows binary into memory isn't that hard by itself, the hard part is all those various DLLs and entry points it imports and expects to be there and function as expected; this is, obviously, what the entire Wine implementation is all about. Wine contains a range of DLL implementations. You can find the DLLs implementation in the dlls/ directory.
Each DLL (at least, the 32 bit version, see below) is implemented in a Unix shared library. The file name of this shared library is the module name of the DLL with a .dll.so suffix (or .drv.so or any other relevant extension depending on the DLL type). This shared library contains the code itself for the DLL, as well as some more information, as the DLL resources and a Wine specific DLL descriptor.
The DLL descriptor, when the DLL is instanciated, is used to create an in-memory PE header, which will provide access to various information about the DLL, including but not limited to its entry point, its resources, its sections, its debug information...
The DLL descriptor and entry point table is generated by the winebuild tool (previously just named build), taking DLL specification files with the extension .spec as input. Resources (after compilation by wrc) or message tables (after compilation by wmc) are also added to the descriptor by winebuild.
Once an application module wants to import a DLL, Wine will look at:
through its list of registered DLLs (in fact, both
the already loaded DLLs, and the already loaded
shared libraries which has registered a DLL
descriptor). Since, the DLL descriptor is
automatically registered when the shared library is
loaded - remember, registration call is put inside a
shared library constructor - using the
PRELOAD
environment variable when
running a Wine process can force the registration of
some DLL descriptors.
If it's not registered, Wine will look for it on
disk, building the shared library name from the DLL
module name. Directory searched for are specified by
the WINEDLLPATH
environment variable.
Failing that, it will look for a real Windows .DLL file to use, and look through its imports, etc) and use the loading of native DLLs.
After the DLL has been identified (assuming it's still a
native one), it's mapped into memory using a
dlopen()
call. Note, that Wine doesn't
use the shared library mechanisms for resolving and/or
importing functions between two shared libraries (for two
DLLs). The shared library is only used for providing a way
to load a piece of code on demand. This piece of code,
thanks the DLL descriptor, will provide the same type of
information a native DLL would. Wine can then use the same
code for native and builtin DLL to handle imports/exports.
Wine also relies on the dynamic loading features of the Unix shared libraries to relocate the DLLs if needed (the same DLL can be loaded at different address in two different processes, and even in two consecutive run of the same executable if the order of loading the DLLs differ).
The DLL descriptor is registered in the Wine realm using
some tricks. The winebuild tool, while
creating the code for DLL descriptor, also creates a
constructor, that will be called when the shared library is
loaded into memory. This constructor will actually register
the descriptor to the Wine DLL loader. Hence, before the
dlopen
call returns, the DLL descriptor
will be known and registered. This also helps to deal with
the cases where there's still dependencies (at the ELF
shared lib level, not at the embedded DLL level) between
different shared libraries: the embedded DLLs will be
properly registered, and even loaded (from a Windows point
of view).
Since Wine is 32-bit code itself, and if the compiler supports Windows' calling convention, stdcall (gcc does), Wine can resolve imports into Win32 code by substituting the addresses of the Wine handlers directly without any thunking layer in between. This eliminates the overhead most people associate with "emulation", and is what the applications expect anyway.
However, if the user specified WINEDEBUG=+relay
, a thunk layer is inserted between the
application imports and the Wine handlers (actually the
export table of the DLL is modified, and a thunk is
inserted in the table); this layer is known as "relay"
because all it does is print out the arguments/return
values (by using the argument lists in the DLL
descriptor's entry point table), then pass the call on,
but it's invaluable for debugging misbehaving calls into
Wine code. A similar mechanism also exists between Windows
DLLs - Wine can optionally insert thunk layers between
them, by using WINEDEBUG=+snoop
,
but since no DLL descriptor information exists for
non-Wine DLLs, this is less reliable and may lead to
crashes.
For Win16 code, there is no way around thunking - Wine needs to relay between 16-bit and 32-bit code. These thunks switch between the app's 16-bit stack and Wine's 32-bit stack, copies and converts arguments as appropriate (an int is 16 bit 16-bit and 32 bits in 32-bit, pointers are segmented in 16 bit (and also near or far) but are 32 bit linear values in 32 bit), and handles the Win16 mutex. Some finer control can be obtained on the conversion, see winebuild reference manual for the details. Suffice to say that the kind of intricate stack content juggling this results in, is not exactly suitable study material for beginners.
A DLL descriptor is also created for every 16 bit DLL. However, this DLL normally paired with a 32 bit DLL. Either, it's the 16 bit counterpart of the 16 bit DLL (KRNL386.EXE for KERNEL32, USER for USER32...), or a 16 bit DLL directly linked to a 32 bit DLL (like SYSTEM for KERNEL32, or DDEML for USER32). In those cases, the 16 bit descriptor(s) is (are) inserted in the same shared library as the the corresponding 32 bit DLL. Wine will also create symbolic links between kernel32.dll.so and system.dll.so so that loading of either KERNEL32.DLL or SYSTEM.DLL will end up on the same shared library.
This document mainly deals with the status of current DLL support by Wine. The Wine ini file currently supports settings to change the load order of DLLs. The load order depends on several issues, which results in different settings for various DLLs.
Native DLLs of course guarantee 100% compatibility for routines they implement. For example, using the native USER DLL would maintain a virtually perfect and Windows 95-like look for window borders, dialog controls, and so on. Using the built-in Wine version of this library, on the other hand, would produce a display that does not precisely mimic that of Windows 95. Such subtle differences can be engendered in other important DLLs, such as the common controls library COMMCTRL or the common dialogs library COMMDLG, when built-in Wine DLLs outrank other types in load order.
More significant, less aesthetically-oriented problems can result if the built-in Wine version of the SHELL DLL is loaded before the native version of this library. SHELL contains routines such as those used by installer utilities to create desktop shortcuts. Some installers might fail when using Wine's built-in SHELL.
Not every application performs better under native DLLs. If a library tries to access features of the rest of the system that are not fully implemented in Wine, the native DLL might work much worse than the corresponding built-in one, if at all. For example, the native Windows GDI library must be paired with a Windows display driver, which of course is not present under Intel Unix and Wine.
Finally, occasionally built-in Wine DLLs implement more features than the corresponding native Windows DLLs. Probably the most important example of such behavior is the integration of Wine with X provided by Wine's built-in USER DLL. Should the native Windows USER library take load-order precedence, such features as the ability to use the clipboard or drag-and-drop between Wine windows and X windows will be lost.
Clearly, there is no one rule-of-thumb regarding which load-order to use. So, you must become familiar with what specific DLLs do and which other DLLs or features a given library interacts with, and use this information to make a case-by-case decision.
Using the DLL sections from the wine configuration file, the load order can be tweaked to a high degree. In general it is advised not to change the settings of the configuration file. The default configuration specifies the right load order for the most important DLLs.
The default load order follows this algorithm: for all DLLs which have a fully-functional Wine implementation, or where the native DLL is known not to work, the built-in library will be loaded first. In all other cases, the native DLL takes load-order precedence.
The DefaultLoadOrder
from the
[DllDefaults] section specifies for all DLLs which version
to try first. See manpage for explanation of the arguments.
The [DllOverrides] section deals with DLLs, which need a different-from-default treatment.
The [DllPairs] section is for DLLs, which must be loaded in pairs. In general, these are DLLs for either 16-bit or 32-bit applications. In most cases in Windows, the 32-bit version cannot be used without its 16-bit counterpart. For Wine, it is customary that the 16-bit implementations rely on the 32-bit implementations and cast the results back to 16-bit arguments. Changing anything in this section is bound to result in errors.
For the future, the Wine implementation of Windows DLL seems to head towards unifying the 16 and 32 bit DLLs wherever possible, resulting in larger DLLs. They are stored in the dlls/ subdirectory using the 32-bit name.
Every Win32 process in Wine has its own dedicated native process on the host system, and therefore its own address space. This section explores the layout of the Windows address space and how it is emulated.
Firstly, a quick recap of how virtual memory works. Physical
memory in RAM chips is split into
frames, and the memory that each
process sees is split into pages. Each
process has its own 4 gigabytes of address space (4gig being
the maximum space addressable with a 32 bit pointer). Pages
can be mapped or unmapped: attempts to access an unmapped
page cause an
EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION
which has
the easily recognizable code of
0xC0000005
. Any page can be mapped to
any frame, therefore you can have multiple addresses which
actually "contain" the same memory. Pages can also be mapped
to things like files or swap space, in which case accessing
that page will cause a disk access to read the contents into
a free frame.
When a Win32 process starts, it does not have a clear address space to use as it pleases. Many pages are already mapped by the operating system. In particular, the EXE file itself and any DLLs it needs are mapped into memory, and space has been reserved for the stack and a couple of heaps (zones used to allocate memory to the app from). Some of these things need to be at a fixed address, and others can be placed anywhere.
The EXE file itself is usually mapped at address
0x400000
and up: indeed, most EXEs have
their relocation records stripped which means they must be
loaded at their base address and cannot be loaded at any
other address.
DLLs are internally much the same as EXE files but they have relocation records, which means that they can be mapped at any address in the address space. Remember we are not dealing with physical memory here, but rather virtual memory which is different for each process. Therefore OLEAUT32.DLL may be loaded at one address in one process, and a totally different one in another. Ensuring all the functions loaded into memory can find each other is the job of the Windows dynamic linker, which is a part of NTDLL.
So, we have the EXE and its DLLs mapped into memory. Two
other very important regions also exist: the stack and the
process heap. The process heap is simply the equivalent of
the libc malloc
arena on UNIX: it's a
region of memory managed by the OS which
malloc
/HeapAlloc
partitions and hands out to the application. Windows
applications can create several heaps but the process heap
always exists.
Windows 9x also implements another kind of heap: the shared heap. The shared heap is unusual in that anything allocated from it will be visible in every other process.
So far we've assumed the entire 4 gigs of address space is
available for the application. In fact that's not so: only
the lower 2 gigs are available, the upper 2 gigs are on
Windows NT used by the operating system and hold the
kernel (from 0x80000000
). Why is the
kernel mapped into every address space? Mostly for
performance: while it's possible to give the kernel its own
address space too - this is what Ingo Molnars 4G/4G VM
split patch does for Linux - it requires that every system
call into the kernel switches address space. As that is a
fairly expensive operation (requires flushing the
translation lookaside buffers etc) and syscalls are made
frequently it's best avoided by keeping the kernel mapped
at a constant position in every processes address space.
Basically, the comparison of memory mappings looks as follows:
Table 7-2. Memory layout (Windows and Wine)
Address | Windows 9x | Windows NT | Linux |
---|---|---|---|
00000000-7fffffff | User | User | User |
80000000-bfffffff | Shared | User | User |
c0000000-ffffffff | Kernel | Kernel | Kernel |
On Windows 9x, in fact only the upper gigabyte
(0xC0000000
and up) is used by the
kernel, the region from 2 to 3 gigs is a shared area used
for loading system DLLs and for file mappings. The bottom
2 gigs on both NT and 9x are available for the programs
memory allocation and stack.
Wine will not allow running native Windows drivers under Unix. This comes mainly because (look at the generic architecture schemas) Wine doesn't implement the kernel features of Windows (kernel here really means the kernel, not the KERNEL32 DLL), but rather sets up a proxy layer on top of the Unix kernel to provide the NTDLL and KERNEL32 features. This means that Wine doesn't provide the inner infrastructure to run native drivers, either from the Win9x family or from the NT family.
In other words, Wine will only be able to provide access to a specific device, if and only if, 1/ this device is supported in Unix (there is Unix-driver to talk to it), 2/ Wine has implemented the proxy code to make the glue between the API of a Windows driver, and the Unix interface of the Unix driver.
Wine, however, tries to implement in the various DLLs needing to access devices to do it through the standard Windows APIs for device drivers in user space. This is for example the case for the multimedia drivers, where Wine loads Wine builtin DLLs to talk to the OSS interface, or the ALSA interface. Those DLLs implement the same interface as any user space audio driver in Windows.