Comment 4 for bug 112052

Just some thoughts.

Stephan is right, Wine seems to imitate Windows (the OS) even in the release progression right now: when you finally reach beta status, start with alpha again ;) But on a Sunday afternoon walk I mused on this here bug anyway.

How far should the integration of Wine into the system go? Should it be just another backend for adept/synaptic/aptitude etc.? Or should it go even deeper, integrated into the APT system (so that Office 2010 could be shipped as a .deb package).
Seriously: if software makers start to use Wine for their products, they should have something more powerful (and canonical) than all the InstallShield/.msi bunch, all reinventing the wheel.
But how could it be done? Should Wine present the hooks to package management systems? Or should this task be implemented by the designers of the PM system (rpm, atp, pkgsrc, ports, portage ...)? Pollution of the Wine registry should be the exception with something APT like, not the norm as with so many custom installers that wrap up Win applications. Perhaps the Wine registry is has to evolve into a more elaborate system, keeping track of which app changed which keys and record every further app that tries to change an existing, non-default key (like hard links to inodes), a regfs so to speak.

But that's not the kind of wine you should be concerned with on Sunday nights ---