WineLib

[FuryCell]

I came across something rather interesting today. I know this is a rather taboo subject but I am thinking of the possibilty of compiling autoit with WineLib. I'm wondering if any of the developers have thought about this and if it is even possible. According to the article WineLib is not very mature yet but maybe one day. =)

Edited November 21, 2009 by P5ych0Gigabyte

[Valik]

Why? What problems does AutoIt solve on Linux that can't be solved with something cross-platform or Linux-based? There's very little need of a tool like AutoIt on Linux since damn near everything that has a GUI is just a front-end GUI around a back-end command-line program... or there is a command-line alternative. That means it can be automated with a shell script or some other language like Python.

There's not much use for a UI automation language on Linux and there's no dearth of cross-platform languages that work just fine on Linux. So... what's the point?

Edited November 21, 2009 by Valik

[FuryCell]

I just posted that to see if there was any interest. Sure a lot of things can be done with other languages but I see autoit used more and more for general programming these days. I'm sure a lot of people would be happy to see a winelib version.

Edited November 21, 2009 by P5ych0Gigabyte

[Valik]

General Windows programming. Take a look at the functions in AutoIt and count how many are specific to Windows. Better yet, count how many functions aren't Windows-specific since that will be a much smaller number.

[Nutster]

Perl, Ruby, Python are all languages / systems that originated in Linux/Unix and are used in ways that AutoIt it is in Windows. There is also Expect that is specifically designed for Linux automation tasks. I've got to learn that one.

At the level AutoIt runs at, Wine (or winelib) does not provide a full enough environment for AutoIt to run effectively on Linux. We just go too deep under the covers. It could run on a Windows virtual machine on a Linux box, as that is a complete environment, but then the AutoIt (and Windows) stuff does not interact with the Linux OS in any meaningful way.

I think Valik put "Porting to Linux" in the "Not going to happen" list for a reason.

Edited November 26, 2009 by Nutster

[Nutster]

Just thinking of what would not need to be have a major rewrite to work under Linux. Some of the variable internals are specific to Windows operations and would need to be rewritten. There are a bunch of math functions (abs, sin, cos, tan, random, etc.) and string functions (StringIsAscii, StringMid, StringLower, etc.) that should run without too much work.

Everything in Environment, Graphics and Sound, GUI Management, Keyboard, Message Boxes, Mouse, Network, COM, Process, Registry, Timer, Tray, Window Management would need a total rewrite. A good chunk of the rest of the function sections either need minor changes to everything or major changes to a few or somewhere in between.

Even using Wine is not going to help.

Edited November 27, 2009 by Nutster
Fix speeling mistake

[Valik]

Put more simply, everything except the basic two dozen or so keywords the language has would need re-written. The functions are what make the language useful and powerful, not those few keywords and the (sometimes awkward) syntax.