Ros-dev March 2006

ros-dev@reactos.org

48 participants
40 discussions

System for manual regression testing
by Maarten Bosma 25 Mar '06

25 Mar '06

Hi, I think ReactOS lacks of testers since WaxDragon is gone. So I had the following idea: A page which lists all regressions and gives you the option to report a working / non-working revision and calculates the range in which it the regression was caused from that data. I know that bugzilla comments are actually sufficient for this and of course this system would have to be linked with bugzilla, but I think that a page where the regressions are listed up would be more motivating to help testing. What do you think about it ? Best regards, Maarten Bosma

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Mailing list ros-diffs
by Aleksey Bragin 25 Mar '06

25 Mar '06

Hello, A good news: ros-diffs mailing list has just been brought back to life, and now fully functioning. In order to see a colourful diff, please go to the url specified in the email, and to have a plaintext overview - just browse through the email. Have fun with it, Aleksey Bragin.

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The WRK and what it means for ReactOS
by Alex Ionescu 21 Mar '06

21 Mar '06

Hi, Later this spring, Dave Probert's project will finally be complete with the realease of the WRK to academia, which means that almost any student such as I, Brandon, Filip, etc will have access to it. What is the WRK? The WRK (Windows Research Kernel) is Microsoft's answer to Linux/BSD source code used in classes. It is a special version of the NT Kernel designed to be used with the CRK (Windows NT Curriculum Kit) based on Windows Internals 4th Edition. It is a collection of about half a million lines of kernel code, including almost all of the process manager, object manager, thread scheduler, and other components discussed in the book. The PnP Manager, Power Subsystem, Kernel Debugger however are missing, as well as other specific code. This code is located in static libraries which are linked in at the end to create a complete kernel. What of the license? It is the reason why the WRK is so exciting and it's taken so long to come out (thank the lawyers). The license allows viewing, modifying and *creating derived work*, as long as any changes are also sent back to MS and that copyright is not misattributed. Additionnally, the license explicitly permits the creation of books or other reference material, including the presense of code snippets to better explain something, as well as sharing information in community forums. All this is allowed for any non-commercial or educational use, including personal research. The WRK also ships with Virtual PC, the build environment (similar to how we use QEMU/Dazzle for TinyKRNL) and full documentation for all the Native APIs. With such a wonderful thing at our disposal, how will this impact the kernel audit (postively)? What decisions do we take regarding the WRK? Do we use it? We can either use it entirely (ReactOS is, IIRC, an non-commercial research project, unless you still want to "vanquish the evil MS and sell millions"), but that would mean attributing copyright to Microsoft which many here would puke at. Alternatively, it can be used as pure documentation, which gives us all the freedom in the world. Or, we can be our true anti-MS/MS-bashing arrogants and call the WRK a heresy that should never be approached or used. Best regards, Alex Ionescu

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The Future of the Desktop
by Rick Langschultz 21 Mar '06

21 Mar '06

Here are a few of my predictions of the future of the desktop. Having stepped back from the role of an internet developer in the past year I have been focusing more on the programming of binary executables. However, seeing the ever increasing change in desktop technology I am going to make a prediction of the future of executables in the operating system. My prediction is: binary executable software will no longer exist except for the underlying operating system. Instead the desktop will be a transparent web environment that will load AJAX applications and utilize web services to connect online data to desktop data. Also there will be minimum to no storage locally on the users desktop system, instead there will be online libraries filled with personal user data which will be in XML file formats, or other text-file based formats. This way a user can use a thumb print on the computer to access their personal data, and email on any computer in the world as well as in a variety of language formats. That is my prediction of the future of desktop systems of computer users.

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RE: [ros-dev] The Future of the Desktop
by Murphy, Ged (Bolton) 21 Mar '06

21 Mar '06

Can we take this discussion off ros-dev please. ros-dev is reserved for issues directly related to ReactOS development. -----Original Message----- From: Ibrahim Damlaj [mailto:idamlaj@gmail.com] Sent: 21 March 2006 08:10 To: ReactOS Development List Subject: Re: [ros-dev] The Future of the Desktop Good point. However, I think that the reason that executables are going to be extinct is because computers are getting faster and faster. Therefore, the performance gain by using lower-level languages is becoming less and less, which is pushing many developers these days to use higher level (or interpreted) languages, which are simpler and faster to program in. Also, by using interpreted languages, the program does not need to be ported (as long as there is an interpreter for every platform). Therefore people tend to program in higher level (interpreted) languages On 3/21/06, Nate DeSimone <desimn(a)rpi.edu <mailto:desimn@rpi.edu> > wrote: Thank you for sharing that, however it is off topic. Rick Langschultz wrote: > Here are a few of my predictions of the future of the desktop. Having > stepped back from the role of an internet developer in the past year I > have been focusing more on the programming of binary executables. > However, seeing the ever increasing change in desktop technology I am > going to make a prediction of the future of executables in the > operating system. > > My prediction is: binary executable software will no longer exist > except for the underlying operating system. Instead the desktop will > be a transparent web environment that will load AJAX applications and > utilize web services to connect online data to desktop data. Also > there will be minimum to no storage locally on the users desktop > system, instead there will be online libraries filled with personal > user data which will be in XML file formats, or other text-file based > formats. This way a user can use a thumb print on the computer to > access their personal data, and email on any computer in the world as > well as in a variety of language formats. > > That is my prediction of the future of desktop systems of computer users. > _______________________________________________ > Ros-dev mailing list > Ros-dev(a)reactos.org <mailto:Ros-dev@reactos.org> > http://www.reactos.org/mailman/listinfo/ros-dev <http://www.reactos.org/mailman/listinfo/ros-dev> > > _______________________________________________ Ros-dev mailing list Ros-dev(a)reactos.org <mailto:Ros-dev@reactos.org> http://www.reactos.org/mailman/listinfo/ros-dev <http://www.reactos.org/mailman/listinfo/ros-dev> ************************************************************************ The information contained in this message or any of its attachments is confidential and is intended for the exclusive use of the addressee. The information may also be legally privileged. The views expressed may not be company policy, but the personal views of the originator. If you are not the addressee, any disclosure, reproduction, distribution or other dissemination or use of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please contact postmaster(a)exideuk.co.uk <mailto:postmaster@exideuk.co.uk> and then delete this message. Exide Technologies is an industrial and transportation battery producer and recycler with operations in 89 countries. Further information can be found at www.exide.com

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RE: [ros-dev] The WRK and what it means for ReactOS
by Murphy, Ged (Bolton) 20 Mar '06

20 Mar '06

Alex Ionescu wrote: > Alternatively, it can be > used as pure documentation, which gives us all the freedom in > the world. This would be the preferred method IMO. Ged. ************************************************************************ The information contained in this message or any of its attachments is confidential and is intended for the exclusive use of the addressee. The information may also be legally privileged. The views expressed may not be company policy, but the personal views of the originator. If you are not the addressee, any disclosure, reproduction, distribution or other dissemination or use of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please contact postmaster(a)exideuk.co.uk <mailto:postmaster@exideuk.co.uk> and then delete this message. Exide Technologies is an industrial and transportation battery producer and recycler with operations in 89 countries. Further information can be found at www.exide.com

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Time for another change
by Steven Edwards 19 Mar '06

19 Mar '06

Hi All, I have decided to step down as Project Coordinator and would like to nominate Aleksey Bragin (Fireball) to run things in the interim until a new one is officially elected. At this time I cannot contribute the amount of effort needed to run the project during the audit and have many things going on as well. Fireball, Ged, GreatLord, Art and others have been doing a good job getting things on track and I think that given the current state of things we are going in the right direction. I am just no longer in a position to provide the kind of leadership needed. Aleksey has been doing a great job, getting the new SVN up, providing general direction and helping to resolve issues that have been coming up. He has also been working to establish a Foundation for the project in Russia and I think it would be best to move our legal and financial operations there. He will be setting up a donation system and I will be transfering the existing funds to him as well as filing the paperwork needed to shutdown US operations. I do not have the time required to try to continue to support the idea of a US Foundation at this point and I am not sure I believe we need it at this point. When I had the idea initially it was my hope that our progress would be much more rapid and our amount of donations and support from outside the project would be much higher. At this point I view my efforts on the project as being a successful failure. My ultimate goal when joining was to help make a Windows replacement/clone (call it what you will) and to see it be widely used. In saying that I believe it must be feature complete and dependable, both of which have not been meet yet. I believe they will be at some point but not during my time of being really active. In trying to reach that ultimate goal I have some short and long terms plans, most of which have been a success: US Foundation - (Failure) Goal help raise awareness of the project and provide assistance and legal representation to developers on the project. We have a good relationship with the Software Freedom Law Center and they have been kind enough to offer us advice however in terms of real legal help given the current state of the project thats not going to happen any time soon. Wine Cooperation - (Success) We share quite a lot of code with the Wine project and although it is hard as hell to get code in to Wine it has generally been a positive experience. The Wine tree contains hundreds if not thousands of minor fixes and features contributed by developers who have worked on both projects. Certain applications such as Taskmgr and Regedit were re-licensed by us and have been merged in to the Wine tree. Samba Cooperation - (Success) We have not fully ported samba however we have established a very positive relationship with the Samba and Samba-Tng developers and they seem very open to the idea of porting Samba to Windows so that in the future when ReactOS is ready it will provide a drop in solution. Elrond from Samba-tng has provided quite a bit of help and ported most of Samba-Tng to Windows already. Raising Awareness about ReactOS - (Success) When I joined no one had heard of us. Now almost any technical gathering I go to, 50 to 90% of the people attending are aware of our work. The GNU, Linux and BSD developers have for the most part changed their attitude regarding our project, its goals and future. Other uses of ReactOS - (Success) This has been the most surprising to me to watch. While we have not reached the ultimate goal we have seen fruits of our labor. The NDISWrapper teams come to us for questions which allows many Linux and BSD users to run Windows network card drivers. The CaptiveNTFS project created a more effective method of getting data from NTFS on to Linux. Many of the tools we have developed and ported are now being used in all sorts of places such as the FreeDOS port of command.com we reimplemented as cmd.exe has been ported to WinCE/PowerPC. Besides helping the NDISWrapper and Wine teams from time to time we are more and more becoming a source of information for educational purposes. So with all of that being said I am not planning on totally leaving however I mainly plan to help write regression tests for Wine in my spare time and hope that it helps ReactOS. I'm happy to help talk to people on behalf of the project and to help promote it in anyway I can. I think the next major thing I am going to try to do is visit Russia during a conference to meet with Fireball again and I am willing to continue to help mediate issues with Wine that may pop up. I still plan on hanging on IRC and the mailing list however I don't know how closely I will follow the list so if you need something email me directly. Thanks -- Steven Edwards "There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come." - Victor Hugo

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r21332
by Alex Ionescu 18 Mar '06

18 Mar '06

> [10:24] <+CIA-9> mbosma * r21332 reactos/dll/directx/ddraw/ (7 files): Unlock ddraw dll. Maguns and I were the only authors and neither of us used > unclean methods to implement it. You're kidding right? I might as well unlock /ntoskrnl then. Best regards, Alex Ionescu

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Putting MIDL output into svn repository.
by Saveliy Tretiakov 18 Mar '06

18 Mar '06

May I add some midl generated files into svn? (like we do with flex and bison) Lack of features in widl is a great stopper to ReactOS development. Actually, I can't do anything with event logging api because of widl. I want to inplment some rpcss functionality, but widl stops me from doing this.

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Alpha workstation
by Steven Edwards 16 Mar '06

16 Mar '06

Hi, Is anyone in the US interested in using the Alpha workstation for a possible port? Its kind of gathering dust here and if no one wants it I would rather we just sell it and stick the money in to the project pot. Thanks -- Steven Edwards "There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come." - Victor Hugo

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Ros-dev March 2006