Keep wine resident

Hello all,=20

Is there a way to instruct wine to stick around after a program has run? =
Alternatively, is there a way to =93boot=94 a wine prefix and keep it =
running?=20

As part of a project to port some windows software to linux, I am using =
wine to run a windows-only command line utility in a loop. Running it =
via wine it works just fine, however, calling it in a loop is extremely =
slow.=20

It seems that the wine =93boots=94 when the program is called, then =
shuts down immediately after. This takes a few seconds every time the =
program is called. Unfortunately I need to call this program many =
thousands of times, so those extra seconds add up to hours.=20

I=92ve discovered that if I run a wine GUI application before running =
the program (such as winecfg, notepad, etc.) beforehand, the startup =
time is eliminated. That solution is a bit awkward, as this program is =
being run in a cluster computing environment (on dozens of headless =
nodes).=20

The ideal solution would be a command line switch to wine or a service =
that could be run when the node boots. I did try wineserver -p, but that =
had no effect on startup time (I=92m not sure what wine server does).=20

Any thoughts?=20


Thanks,=20

Seth