Wine Developers Contemplate A Kernel-Like Staging Tree

Wine developers are contemplating a staging-like tree where new changes could be introduced faster before being mainlined inside Wine, but this idea doesn't catch the fancy of all Wine developers.

Michael Müller who is responsible for the Pipelight way of getting Netflix on Linux (though it's no longer really needed if running Chrome on Linux where you can now natively play Netflix using HTML5 EME), took a concerted effort to the Wine development list about having a staging tree.

Michael's post can be read in full via this mailing list post but it basically outlines an area where Wine work can be gathered and tested by enthusiasts for patches that aren't yet ready for mainline Wine -- either due to meeting the coding standards, not being fully vetted, etc.

Müller hopes a Wine staging tree would suit those enthusiasts needing to get their Windows apps running on Linux quicker a path and also provide useful feedback to developers of said patches not yet merged. Michael already converted his wine-compholio package into a basic sort of staging tree that previously was used for Pipelight/Silverlight patches. The staging tree tries to differentiate itself from PlayOnLinux and alternatives by not accepting "hacks" to make things work.

Not all Wine developers though are enthusiastic about the staging tree idea in not wanting to see bug reports against un-merged code, the coding standards not being met, and other issues of that sort. However, it's an interesting idea and we'll see where this work ends up heading.