Ros-dev March 2007

ros-dev@reactos.org

32 participants
28 discussions

Thanks. ReactOS helped me develop and debug Windows drivers.
by Drew Scott Daniels 24 Mar '07

24 Mar '07

Hi, I wanted to extend my thanks to ReactOS developers. I have used the ReactOS source code on several occasions to help develop and debug drivers intended for Microsoft Windows (WDM NT). I also used it to help diagnose a hardware problem. The Vista Windows Driver Kit sometimes include sample driver code that will not work on systems newer than Windows 2003. I think I actually used OpenRCE.org to help figure this out, but ReactOS does a better job of letting me follow kernel level function logic. The new PREfast annotations are also poorly documented but I don't expect ReactOS will help with that. Perhaps its drivers could help though. One computer we had was bug checking (BSoD) with an NMI error with Windows XP. Microsoft's documentation on this was poor and sometimes misleading. Many other web sites provided incomplete (mostly just inquiries), or misleading information (speculation that the wrong hardware was at fault). With WinDBG, a search engine, and the ReactOS source code, I managed to find what hardware was generating the bug check. I then looked up the specifications from Intel and got quite a bit of a better understanding. I vaguely recall Walter Oney's WDM driver book provides a stub driver which will help newer Windows drivers run on older versions of Windows (although it's not redistributable and is documented as a workaround he doesn't want others to use). Pointers to this may help ReactOS driver developers. Making sure source code is easy to search with Google is very useful. I see that Google's source code search seems to search ReactOS, and there's some Doxygen documentation that can be searched. Unfortunately SVN or even other current source code seemingly cannot be searched without using alternate methods (such as downloading and searching offline). Ideally, something like lxr would be available for ReactOS, and through Google. I also have the same wish for the most recent version of the Linux kernel (Google doesn't seem to index lxr). Having more sample driver code (even third party) would certainly be useful. I'd like to sell companies on using ReactOS, but there seems to be a real anti production use message widely conveyed. I feel ReactOS is far more stable than is given credit. That said, it would be nice if even just some basic core part of ReactOS was stabilised (not even at a Desktop user level). By "stabilised", I mean if people could test and testify certain kinds of qualified stability (e.g. Version q ran x days, but it was only doing y and had z hardware). Also it would be nice to have even more information about changes to ReactOS that have/might make things likely to break (bugcheck, freeze, not behave...). At least one of the recent newsletters helped with that. I'd love to use ReactOS to replace simple Windows XP Embedded images (with many drivers and features stripped out). Once again, thanks for all the ReactOS efforts. I'm sure I do not yet fully appreciate the resources available to me because of ReactOS, but the ones I've found have been extremely useful. Drew Daniels Resume: http://www.boxheap.net/ddaniels/resume.html

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replacement for winecalc
by Timo Kreuzer 23 Mar '07

23 Mar '07

Hi, Someone from the forum has written a replacement for winecalc and asks, if we would want to use it. I think it deserves some attention: http://www.reactos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3585 - The code is smaller than winecalc. - It seems to (almost, see below) work correctly as far as I have tested (type 2+3*4 in winecalc and you will get 12 as result....) - brackets are working (not implemented in winecalc) - inv is working (not implemented in winecalc) - It looks a little better than winecalc "bugs" found so far: - there's an issue with foucs, that is put on a button when switching to another app - grad calculates with 200 instead of 400 = 360° - modulo and hyp seem unimplemented - you can't use and, xor, ... in dec mode Greetings, Timo

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Re: [ros-dev] [ros-diffs] [janderwald] 26147: - fix makefiles to depend on TOOLS_OUT_ value than directly hardcoding it to $(OUTPUT)
by Aleksey Bragin 21 Mar '07

21 Mar '07

This breaks the very beginnings of the compile process. WBR, Aleksey Bragin. On Mar 20, 2007, at 11:12 PM, janderwald(a)svn.reactos.org wrote: > Author: janderwald > Date: Tue Mar 20 23:12:10 2007 > New Revision: 26147 > > URL: http://svn.reactos.org/svn/reactos?rev=26147&view=rev > Log: > - fix makefiles to depend on TOOLS_OUT_ value than directly > hardcoding it to $(OUTPUT) >

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hello out there
by Tim Taubert 20 Mar '07

20 Mar '07

Hi, I am from Berlin, Germany and really interested in joining the ROS project as a developer. I started as proposed with digging into the code a little bit and wrote some patches. So my first question is, which developer (with svn write access) do i have to contact so that he can help my to review and (hopefully) apply some of my patches? Second thing is that i read that you are already planning a complete rewrite of the explorer code. I would really like to be a part of the explorer project but others are also welcome. If you have any idea how to start just let me know. With best regards, Tim Taubert

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Summer of Code 2007?
by Nate DeSimone 20 Mar '07

20 Mar '07

Hi all, Is ReactOS doing SoC this year? I didn't see you on the list, though I know you did it last year. ~Nate DeSimone

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Build problem ()
by Radu Bulboaca 16 Mar '07

16 Mar '07

Hi, I tried to build the ReactOS main trunk, but I've run into some problems. 'make all' fails with the message: mkdir: cannot create directory `obj-i386\\lib\\inflib_host': No such file or directory Up until now, I've got the 'trunk' directory from SVN (using TortoiseSVN), I exported the sources to a directory in the ros Build Environment (I was asked for that directory on install) and attempted to build from there. I also looked at the Makefile and set the '-mi' flag (ROS_RBUILDFLAGS = -mi), but that didn't help. Just for the record, I'm building on a WinXP SP2, using ReactOS Build Environment 0.3.5b2. I also tried the 0.3.4 version, but I run into the same issues. Do you have any ideas? Thanks, Radu

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Re: [ros-dev] Endianess
by Tristan Miller 14 Mar '07

14 Mar '07

>Sorry for waiting until now to reply. It's all good. : ) >What do you think? I think we should convert to BE, but not away from PE-COFF. There are too many differences between them, and while it would be less work in the short term to switch to ELF, in the long term, implementing all of the features of PE would be very troublesome. Not the least concern is that information such as import data and file headers aren't even mapped into a process's address space with ELF. As I understand it, when you get an IHANDLE to a linked in DLL it's just a pointer to the mapped in PE file header. I'm sure there are programs that require this on a source level to run (which, for quite some time will be the only thing that affects us on the PowerPC side of things). That being said, a proper pe-powerpcbe target in gcc should then be the first priority. Binutils already more or less properly creates pe-powercbe files (with what I assume are your patches on the wiki, and a little monkeying to make sure that the MZ header and PE signature are always written as little-endian regardless of the target architecture). What kind of issues had you had on the EABI side of things, and what was your plan in more detail for emulating the features of PE in ELF? Also how much progress had you made in the port up to now? ~Tristan Miller (monocasa)

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Interest in ReactOS and some requets
by Arko Provo Mukherjee 13 Mar '07

13 Mar '07

Dear friends, We are 3 undergrad comp sc. and IT students from India. We have some coding experience but have never worked for the Open Source Community as developers. Yet we have always admired the concept and used FLOSS stuff like GNU/Linux. We came across ReactOS project and got really interested in it. We really want to contribute to the development of React OS and since we are new in Open Source development, we would require your guidance and support in stuff like understanding the code, building the build environment etc. Among other shortfalls that we have, we haven't programmed much on Windows platform (almost always Linux ie) and hence know little about the Windows API. But we are eager to learn and can definitely learn parts of the API as long as you can guide us. We humbly request you to guide us and give us some problems so that we can try and support this community. A lot is left to be done in ReactOS and it would be great being a part of such a project. Also we are better at writing C codes than reading them ( like almost everyone ;) ) and hence would request you to give us some problems that we can write from stratch rather than bug fixing that would require reading all codes. But we are ready to contribute in any way you feel we can as developers and support this community. Regards Arko Provo Mukherjee Abhishek Biswas Biswanath Banik

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How can I help?
by Sam Banks 11 Mar '07

11 Mar '07

Hi Guys I have recently discovered ReactOS through my research for Linuxforums.org, I have written an article on ReactOS, which should show up online in the near future. Basically I like your work and I would be keen to contribute some of my (unfortunately limited) time and skills to your project. I cant code but I can write ok. Could I be of any use to you guys? Cheers Sam -- Did you know that if you play a Windows XP cd backwards, you will hear the voice of Satan? That's nothing! If you play it forward, it'll install Windows XP.

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Endianess
by Tristan Miller 11 Mar '07

11 Mar '07

Hey, Sorry, having problems with internet or else I'd ask this on IRC. I was curious as to why the emphasis on little-endian mode in powerpc. Mac G5's don't even have le-mode, and it definitely seems that (although im not totally sure, as theres not much info out in the wild yet) that the XBox360 lacks le-mode as well. Also, on the processors that support le-mode, it seems in all cases (although theres probably some embedded guy that I'm missing : P) that do support it, it's selectable at the minimum at the user/supervisor level with only a bit of work. Perhaps eventually a thunking layer (maybe a part of NTVDM, would it need to be that complex?) that would translate the calls from le usermode to a be kernel could be written, allowing one to run NT-PPC applications that are out there. We wouldn't be able to load drivers (or any le kernel code), but are there actually any PPC drivers out in the wild? Plus, it seems that it would definitely be a good thing for the kernel source to be tested on multiple endians as early as possible in its development to ease porting later on. ~ Tristan Miller (monocasa)

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Ros-dev March 2007