Ability to run process inside proton/wine prefix

[Cat-Lady]

Hello mid-ed-launcher maintainer,
Is there an ability to run specific application inside the proton (or wine) prefix where the game itself runs? It would be useful for stuff like opentrack, where program itself must be run strictly in same prefix as the game, to properly interface.

Cheers,

[rfvgyhn]

No, there isn't. Does it need to just run in the same prefix or does it have to run within the container (bwrap/pressure-vessel)? If you just need to be able to set the WINEPREFIX env var and run via wine, that would be easy enough to add. If it has to run within the container, that might be more difficult as I'm not familiar with it. I'm not sure if Steam exposes an easy way to do that or not.

Are you currently manually running it? If so, what's your process to do that?

[pan-mroku]

Please take a look here

For opentrack, there is no other way to use it with proton, than running a second copy inside the container

From what I remember, crucial things were

1. Run without wait for opentrack
2. Sleep before opentrack, so the game actually starts first

I just put it in a separate script I call from steam

[Cat-Lady]

Currently, I am running opentrack from script like that:

#Run game or given command in environment
PROTONVER=$(ls /home/user/.steam/compatibilitytools.d/ | grep GE-Proton)

cd "/home/user/.steam/steam/steamapps/compatdata/359320/pfx/drive_c/opentrack"
DEF_CMD=("/home/user/.steam/steam/steamapps/compatdata/359320/pfx/drive_c/opentrack/opentrack.exe")
PATH="/home/user/.steam/compatibilitytools.d/$PROTONVER/files/bin/:/usr/bin:/bin" \
	TERM="xterm" \
	WINEDEBUG="-all" \
	WINEDLLPATH="/home/user/.steam/compatibilitytools.d/$PROTONVER/files/lib64//wine:/home/user/.steam/compatibilitytools.d/$PROTONVER/files/lib//wine" \
	LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/home/user/.steam/compatibilitytools.d/$PROTONVER/files/lib64/:/home/user/.steam/compatibilitytools.d/$PROTONVER/files/lib/:/usr/lib/pressure-vessel/overrides/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/aliases:/usr/lib/pressure-vessel/overrides/lib/i386-linux-gnu/aliases" \
	WINEPREFIX="/home/user/.steam/steam/steamapps/compatdata/359320/pfx/" \
	WINEESYNC="1" \
	WINEFSYNC="1" \
	SteamGameId="359320" \
	SteamAppId="359320" \
	WINEDLLOVERRIDES="steam.exe=b;dotnetfx35.exe=b;dPRESSURE_VESSEL_SHELL=instead %command%otnetfx35setup.exe=b;beclient.dll=b,n;beclient_x64.dll=b,n;d3d11=n;d3d10core=n;d3d9=n;dxgi=n;d3d12=n;d3d12core=n" \
	STEAM_COMPAT_CLIENT_INSTALL_PATH="/home/user/.steam" \
	WINE_LARGE_ADDRESS_AWARE="1" \
	GST_PLUGIN_SYSTEM_PATH_1_0="/home/user/.steam/compatibilitytools.d/$PROTONVER/files/lib64/gstreamer-1.0:/home/user/.steam/compatibilitytools.d/$PROTONVER/files/lib/gstreamer-1.0" \
	WINE_GST_REGISTRY_DIR="/home/user/.steam/steam/steamapps/compatdata/359320/gstreamer-1.0/" \
	"/home/user/.steam/compatibilitytools.d/$PROTONVER/files/bin/wine64" c:\\windows\\system32\\steam.exe "${@:-${DEF_CMD[@]}}"

(The PROTONVER stuff is for not having to update it everytime I update GE-Proton, irrelevant to the function we are talking about. The prefix number is ED prefix).

There used to be a way to create skeleton script like that by setting PROTON_DUMP_DEBUG_COMMANDS=1 env variable, but it was (sadly) removed past Proton 7, see:
ValveSoftware/Proton#7575 (comment)

Despite the warnings, my old scripts made with this method keep working - but at this point it is quite terrible hack, that could stop at any Proton update, so I was looking for more robust solution.

Interestingly for our case, we can inject into %command% of steam, see:
ValveSoftware/Proton#7575 (comment)

...apart from PRESSURE_VESSEL_SHELL=instead %command% mentioned in the previously linked comment. Theoretically, it (injecting via sed) should allow to run any number and combination of processes and arguments inside the vessel, and min-ed-launcher could utilize it for own purposes... Maybe. Might be tricky to implement, but in theory, nothing should stop it from working.

[Cat-Lady]

Probably most clean way of achieving this would be checking how:
https://github.com/sonic2kk/steamtinkerlaunch
...does it and mimicking (only this functionality) here.