Ttgjyuk

I have installed Wine and I am quite happy with my current version but winetricks has let me down a few times with various error messages.

How do I update winetricks to get the very latest version on Ubuntu?

The version of winetricks that comes with the stock Ubuntu installation is often quite old, even the version available from a more modern PPA can lag a bit. It is a great idea and a very safe one to update winetricks manually, independent of your main Wine installation, this can be done in a few simple steps:

1. Check for the latest version, remove the old version:

First check to see what is the latest version available from upstream with this handy one-liner:

curl --silent --show-error 
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Winetricks/winetricks/master/src/winetricks --stderr - 
| grep ^WINETRICKS_VERSION | cut -d '=' -f 2

Then if this trumps your own installed version (to see your version run winetricks --version from a command line) remove your currently installed version:

sudo apt-get remove winetricks

2. Install the latest version:

Then download and install the very latest version:

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Winetricks/winetricks/master/src/winetricks
chmod +x winetricks 
sudo mv -v winetricks /usr/local/bin

As demonstrated on my own system the latest version can then be tested:

andrew@ilium~$ winetricks --version
20190310-next - sha256sum: 93ef93104e51331c29857e8c56430720aac185e0d99b21c6108344c27057d698
andrew@ilium~$ 

3. Add some extras & check for newer syntax:

It may also be a good idea to ensure that you have a few required 'helper' applications for winetricks to run, although most of these should have already been installed with your copy of Wine:

sudo apt-get install cabextract p7zip unrar unzip wget zenity

Then check the correct usage, which could have changed from your older version:

andrew@illium~$ winetricks -h
Usage: /usr/local/bin/winetricks [options] [command|verb|path-to-verb] ...
Executes given verbs. Each verb installs an application or changes a setting.

Options:
 --country=CC Set country code to CC and don't detect your IP address
 --force Don't check whether packages were already installed
 --gui Show gui diagnostics even when driven by commandline
 --isolate Install each app or game in its own bottle (WINEPREFIX)
 --self-update Update this application to the last version
 --update-rollback Rollback the last self update
-k, --keep_isos Cache isos (allows later installation without disc)
 --no-clean Don't delete temp directories (useful during debugging)
-q, --unattended Don't ask any questions, just install automatically
-r, --ddrescue Retry hard when caching scratched discs
 --showbroken Even show verbs that are currently broken in wine
-t --torify Run downloads under torify, if available
 --verify Run (automated) GUI tests for verbs, if available
-v, --verbose Echo all commands as they are executed
-h, --help Display this message and exit
-V, --version Display version and exit

Commands:
list list categories
list-all list all categories and their verbs
apps list list verbs in category 'applications'
benchmarks list list verbs in category 'benchmarks'
dlls list list verbs in category 'dlls'
games list list verbs in category 'games'
settings list list verbs in category 'settings'
list-cached list cached-and-ready-to-install verbs
list-download list verbs which download automatically
list-manual-download list verbs which download with some help from the user
list-installed list already-installed verbs
prefix=foobar select WINEPREFIX=/home/andrew/.local/share/wineprefixes/foobar
annihilate Delete ALL DATA AND APPLICATIONS INSIDE THIS WINEPREFIX
andrew@illium~$ 

4. Safely reverse these steps:

If for some reason you wish to return to your older repository version you can simply run the following:

sudo rm /usr/local/bin/winetricks
sudo apt-get install winetricks

And all will be as it was.

References:

• WineHQ Wiki: winetricks