Command-Line Options

--debugmsg [channels]

Wine isn't perfect, and many Windows applications still don't run without bugs under Wine (but then, many of them don't run without bugs under native Windows either!). To make it easier for people to track down the causes behind each bug, Wine provides a number of debug channels that you can tap into.

Each debug channel, when activated, will trigger logging messages to be displayed to the console where you invoked wine. From there you can redirect the messages to a file and examine it at your leisure. But be forewarned! Some debug channels can generate incredible volumes of log messages. Among the most prolific offenders are relay which spits out a log message every time a win32 function is called, win which tracks windows message passing, and of course all which is an alias for every single debug channel that exists. For a complex application, your debug logs can easily top 1 MB and higher. A relay trace can often generate more than 10 MB of log messages, depending on how long you run the application. Logging does slow down Wine quite a bit, so don't use --debugmsg unless you really do want log files.

Within each debug channel, you can further specify a message class, to filter out the different severities of errors. The four message classes are: trace, fixme, warn, err.

To turn on a debug channel, use the form class+channel. To turn it off, use class-channel. To list more than one channel in the same --debugmsg option, separate them with commas. For example, to request warn class messages in the heap debug channel, you could invoke wine like this:

$ wine --debugmsg warn+heap program_name
        

If you leave off the message class, wine will display messages from all four classes for that channel:

$ wine --debugmsg +heap program_name
        

If you wanted to see log messages for everything except the relay channel, you might do something like this:

$ wine --debugmsg +all,-relay program_name
        

Here is a master list of all the debug channels and classes in Wine. More channels might be added to (or subtracted from) later versions.

all       accel     advapi    animate   aspi      atom      avifile   bitblt   
bitmap    caret     cdrom     class     clipboard clipping  combo     comboex  
comm      commctrl  commdlg   console   crtdll    cursor    datetime  dc       
ddeml     ddraw     debug     debugstr  delayhlp  dialog    dinput    dll      
dosfs     dosmem    dplay     driver    dsound    edit      elfdll    enhmetafile
event     exec      file      fixup     font      gdi       global    graphics 
header    heap      hook      hotkey    icmp      icon      imagehlp  imagelist
imm       int       int10     int16     int17     int19     int21     int31    
io        ipaddress joystick  key       keyboard  ldt       listbox   listview 
local     mci       mcianim   mciavi    mcicda    mcimidi   mciwave   mdi      
menu      message   metafile  midi      mmaux     mmio      mmsys     mmtime   
module    monthcal  mpr       msacm     msg       msvideo   nativefont nonclient
ntdll     odbc      ole       opengl    pager     palette   pidl      print    
process   profile   progress  prop      propsheet psapi     psdrv     ras      
rebar     reg       region    relay     resource  richedit  scroll    segment  
seh       selector  sendmsg   server    setupapi  setupx    shell     snoop    
sound     static    statusbar storage   stress    string    syscolor  system   
tab       tape      tapi      task      text      thread    thunk     timer    
toolbar   toolhelp  tooltips  trackbar  treeview  ttydrv    tweak     typelib  
updown    ver       virtual   vxd       wave      win       win16drv  win32    
wing      wininet   winsock   winspool  wnet      x11       x11drv    
        

For more details about debug channels, check out the The Wine Developer's Guide.

--dll

--dosver

--help

--managed

--version

--winver