[ros-dev] Development plans for May

[Aleksey Bragin]

	Hi,
as we earlier discussed, there is an idea to make 0.3.10 a "hardware- 
compatibility" release.

There is a full list of 0.3.10 milestones bugs linked from our  
roadmap page, but here are some possible directions for work:
- USB support for keyboard and mouse devices. Right now, it needs  
fixing the rare crash during booting (bug is bugzilled, comment  
explaining how to solve the problem is attached, some investigation  
remains), and more testing on real hardware.
- Uniata support: it solves many problems at once, such as a stupid  
8Gb limit which is a nonsense for a 2009-year operating system, and  
Serial ATA support, which greatly enhances possible ReactOS usability  
(along with the first item of this list). I use it in my builds  
everyday for more than a month, it works very good. Problems:  
VirtualBox CDROM support (it doesn't recognize it), on my  
realhardware it also experiences similar problems. Bug is also  
bugzilled, a lot of debug logs attached, so everyone can participate.
- Common NICs support: Cameron is doing great work, testers too.  
There are some outstanding problems, which you can see from http:// 
www.reactos.org/wiki/index.php/Supported_Hardware/Network_cards
- Sound support: Johannes knows best, but getting any progress with  
sound by 0.3.10 release date is greatly appreciated.
- Videocards support: Olaf performs some tesitng and bugreporting.  
Third party drivers support is rather weak, http://www.reactos.org/ 
wiki/index.php/Supported_Hardware/Video_cards , and usually is  
limited by VMWare's video driver which is being one of the most  
supported through the ReactOS development history.

Besides of that, Olaf is organizing the Golden Apps testing, so that  
we won't discover regressions occasionally or by the time the release  
is branched and  everyone is awaiting, but instead that's going to  
happen on a periodical basis, and he's going to manage this process  
with help of our fellow testers.

Target 0.3.10 release date is month from now on - that means,  
somewhere in the end of May. Certainly, if our goals aren't met, the  
release is going to be rescheduled and that's it, but, I'd like to  
ask to concentrate on the above problems first. They are hard to  
solve when every problem is being approached by one person, but with  
a common effort they aren't going to be a problem.

Any new developers - welcome! There are very definite goals, enough  
of information, so please feel free to join and help.


With the best regards,
Aleksey Bragin.