Vintner/README.md

vintner

vintner cross compiles with the real MSVC toolchain on Linux, using Wine — a single Go binary, inspired by mstorsjo/msvc-wine's approach (download the actual MSVC/WinSDK, wrap the compiler under Wine) and implemented independently.

Once installed, you invoke the real Microsoft toolchain exactly like on Windows: cl, link, lib, rc, midl, mc, mt, dumpbin, msbuild, nmake, ml, ml64, armasm, armasm64, plus trivial cmd/findstr shims, all work from your PATH — including full MSBuild projects and, with --with-wdk, real KMDF/UMDF Windows drivers.

Contents

• How it works
• Installation
• Quick start
• Commands
• Building drivers (WDK)
• Language
• Using clang-cl/lld-link instead of Wine
• Building from source
• How the pieces fit together
• License

How it works

vintner is one Go binary that behaves differently depending on the name it's invoked as (a "multi-call binary", like busybox):

• Invoked as cl, link, lib, ... → it loads a small per-architecture env.json, builds the INCLUDE/LIB/WINEPATH environment Wine needs, rewrites absolute unix paths in the arguments into Wine's z:\... form (working around a Wine/cl.exe include-path bug), runs the real .exe under wine/wine64, and rewrites the tool's output back from z:\... paths to plain unix paths so your build system's error parsing keeps working.
• Invoked as vintner → it exposes the download, install, env and version management subcommands described below (short aliases: dl, i, e, v; help/h prints usage).

Installation

On ALT Linux, via Nivora:

stplr install nivora/vintner

Prebuilt binary, from the latest release:

curl -fLo vintner "https://github.com/Cheviiot/vintner/releases/latest/download/vintner-linux-$(uname -m | sed 's/x86_64/amd64/;s/aarch64/arm64/')"
chmod +x vintner
sudo install vintner /usr/local/bin/vintner

From source — see Building from source.

Either way, wine/wine64, msitools (for msiextract) and git need to be on PATH at run time (see Prerequisites below); Nivora installs already pull these in as package dependencies.

Prerequisites

• wine (or wine64) — runs the real cl.exe/link.exe/etc.
• msitools (msiextract) — unpacks the .msi payloads MSVC/WinSDK ship as.
• git — used to apply the small compatibility patches bundled with download (see Compatibility patches below).

On ALT Linux:

pkcon install wine msitools git

Quick start

# 1. Download and unpack MSVC + Windows SDK into ~/.vintner (requires
#    accepting Microsoft's Visual Studio Build Tools license). Pass
#    --dest <dir> for a different location.
vintner download --accept-license

# 2. Wire up the tool wrappers
vintner install

# 3. Add the toolchain to PATH and build
export PATH=~/.vintner/bin/x64:$PATH
cl /nologo /EHsc hello.cpp

Commands

vintner download (dl) --accept-license [--dest <dir>] [options]   fetch and unpack MSVC/WinSDK/WDK
vintner install (i) [dir]                                         wire up wrappers for a downloaded MSVC
vintner env (e) --bin <dir>/bin/<arch>                            print INCLUDE/LIB for native clang-cl/lld-link use
vintner version (v)                                               print the version
vintner help (h)                                                  print usage

--dest/[dir] both default to ~/.vintner when omitted.

download's main options: --msvc-version, --sdk-version, --architecture (repeatable: x86/x64/arm/arm64/host), --host-arch, --only-host, --with-wdk (see below), --ignore (repeatable), --only-download, --only-unpack, --keep-unpack, --skip-patch, --cache, --language, --include-optional, --skip-recommended, --major, --preview, --manifest, --list-workloads, --list-components, --print-deps-tree. Run vintner download -h for the full list with descriptions.

--list-workloads/--list-components print every workload/component id (with its human-readable title) available in the fetched manifest and exit without downloading anything — useful for discovering what to pass as a bare package id or via --with-*. --print-deps-tree prints the dependency tree of whatever would actually be selected (honoring every other flag), also without downloading.

Building drivers (WDK)

vintner download --accept-license --with-wdk

additionally fetches the Windows Driver Kit (headers, import libs, and the MSBuild WindowsKernelModeDriver10.0/WindowsUserModeDriver10.0 PlatformToolsets) so msbuild can build real KMDF/UMDF drivers — compiling, linking, INF stamping and the Inf2Cat signability check (with SignMode=off) all work under Wine. Verified end-to-end against a real sample driver from microsoft/Windows-driver-samples. Only x64 and arm64 targets have a WDK package upstream (no x86/arm).

Language

CLI messages (usage text, progress lines, prompts) default to English. Set VINTNER_LANG=ru (or have a ru-prefixed LC_ALL/LC_MESSAGES/LANG, e.g. ru_RU.UTF-8) for Russian:

VINTNER_LANG=ru vintner help

Deeper error text bubbled up from internal packages stays in English.

Using clang-cl/lld-link instead of Wine

You don't need Wine at all if you drive the (nonredistributable) MSVC/WinSDK headers and libraries with Clang/LLD in MSVC-compatible mode:

eval "$(vintner env --bin ~/.vintner/bin/x64)"
clang-cl -c hello.c
lld-link hello.obj -out:hello.exe

Building from source

go build -o vintner ./cmd/vintner

Go 1.23+ is all you need to build it; wine/msitools are only needed at run time (install/tool invocation and download respectively).

go vet ./...
go test ./...

How the pieces fit together

toolrelay.exe — surviving Wine's exit-code truncation

install compiles assets/vendor/toolrelay.cpp (a small native Windows launcher, original to this project) with the freshly-installed host-arch cl.exe (best-effort: if wine isn't present yet, or the compile fails, install still succeeds and the wrapper runtime just falls back to invoking tools directly through wine). When present, every non-MSBuild tool invocation is routed through it via two named FIFOs. This is what lets mt.exe's CMake-compatibility exit-code translation (0x41020001 → 0xbb) survive Wine's own exit-code truncation: only a native Windows process observing the untranslated code via GetExitCodeProcess() can catch it before Wine marshals the process exit back to Unix and drops everything but the low byte.

Compatibility patches — making MSBuild work without a Windows Registry

download applies a handful of small patches (assets/patches) to the downloaded MSVC/WinSDK tree — independently written for this project — that make VsDevCmd.bat and MSBuild's SDK-detection props work without a Windows Registry (which doesn't exist under Wine): they check the SDK directly under the VS install root instead of querying the registry, skip telemetry, and don't hard-fail devcmd setup when an optional component (ConnectionManagerExe, bundled CMake/Ninja) wasn't downloaded.

License

MIT, see LICENSE.txt — covers vintner's own source only. The MSVC Build Tools / Windows SDK / WDK that download fetches remain governed by Microsoft's own license (accepted via --accept-license), same as with any other way of obtaining them.