Version: 10.0~repack-6 When using the integrated Wine "hh.exe" CHM viewer to open a CHM help on Debian Trixie, only a blank (white) page appears. This can be tested for example by installing "7-Zip" using Winetricks and opening its "7-Zip Help" desktop entry afterwards.
Hello, this seems caused by Debian's wine having disabled automatic download of gecko packages. [1] Unfortunately it looks like it stays disabled even when manually downloading and installing gecko packages from here [2][3]. Either way, at the console I get a message like in [4]. Kind regards, Bernhard [1] https://wiki.debian.org/Wine#Mono_and_Gecko [2] https://dl.winehq.org/wine/wine-gecko/2.47.4/wine-gecko-2.47.4-x86.msi [3] https://dl.winehq.org/wine/wine-gecko/2.47.4/wine-gecko-2.47.4-x86_64.msi [4] $ wine hh.exe 7-zip.chm Could not find Wine Gecko. HTML rendering will be disabled. 0130:err:mshtml:create_document_object Failed to init Gecko, returning CLASS_E_CLASSNOTAVAILABLE
control: tag -1 moreinfo I do not use gecko myself, looking for info about what is going on from those that have interest in it. Best wishes, Mike
control: tag -1 moreinfo I do not use gecko myself, looking for info about what is going on from those that have interest in it. Best wishes, Mike
Am 01.11.25 um 19:44 schrieb Michael Gilbert: Hello Mike, I am not sure, but I think this issue is not about gecko not working after it got installed manually, it is more about users - don't get asked to have wine download gecko itself (how it behaves with upstream wine) or - get told to how to install gecko manually somehow. I guess disabling of the download of gecko got into the Debian package with [1]. Maybe it would be acceptable to change this patch to get the dialog back without the download, but show the user some informations, or a link to the Debian wiki, with some further instructions how to react to the "Could not find Wine Gecko" console message, which some users may not notice when not running from a console. The bug [2] may be related, as it seems this made the wine package look for the gecko install package locally again. It is just users need to know they need to put those packages there. Kind regards, Bernhard [1] https://salsa.debian.org/wine-team/wine/-/blob/debian/10.0_repack-11/debian/patches/disable/addons-download.patch?ref_type=tags [2] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=812750
Am 01.11.25 um 19:44 schrieb Michael Gilbert: Hello Mike, I am not sure, but I think this issue is not about gecko not working after it got installed manually, it is more about users - don't get asked to have wine download gecko itself (how it behaves with upstream wine) or - get told to how to install gecko manually somehow. I guess disabling of the download of gecko got into the Debian package with [1]. Maybe it would be acceptable to change this patch to get the dialog back without the download, but show the user some informations, or a link to the Debian wiki, with some further instructions how to react to the "Could not find Wine Gecko" console message, which some users may not notice when not running from a console. The bug [2] may be related, as it seems this made the wine package look for the gecko install package locally again. It is just users need to know they need to put those packages there. Kind regards, Bernhard [1] https://salsa.debian.org/wine-team/wine/-/blob/debian/10.0_repack-11/debian/patches/disable/addons-download.patch?ref_type=tags [2] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=812750
Le Sat, Nov 01, 2025 at 10:12:07PM +0100, Bernhard Übelacker a écrit : I work a lot with WINE here, including creating a lot of new prefixes. It would be a pain to have that Gecko dialog back, even without a download. If really wine-gecko is useful to Debian users, then it should be packaged. So people needing it could directly install it from the Debian archive, like we can already do with DXVK for example.
I am open to a proposed patch that does all of that. I don't use gecko and don't plan to develop it myself. Best wishes, Mike
I am open to a proposed patch that does all of that. I don't use gecko and don't plan to develop it myself. Best wishes, Mike
As Antoine points out, the approach will need to not burden ordinary wine users, and agreed reviving the wine-gecko debian package is a far more ideal solution. If a dialog is to appear, it needs to be limited to only the moment an app directly invokes gecko. Best wishes, Mike
As Antoine points out, the approach will need to not burden ordinary wine users, and agreed reviving the wine-gecko debian package is a far more ideal solution. If a dialog is to appear, it needs to be limited to only the moment an app directly invokes gecko. Best wishes, Mike