18 Jul
2009
18 Jul
'09
12:44 p.m.
2009/7/18 Jose Catena <jc1(a)diwaves.com>
But after studying the code a bit and following the
mailing lists for a
while, the perception of organization and progress is >poor,
what introduces
the doubt: there is a lot of work to be done, would my effort be wasted?
The only case your effort might be wasted is if you`d writing bad/incorrect
code.
Its a pity your criticizm is not a constructive one. Its easy to point out
things in this project that are not really capable. You dont need to be a
developer to point those, more or less correctly. The real deal is thinking
of solutions.
1) Documentation. I know most devs like me hate having
to write it. But
complex projects can’t progress well without a >minimum well
structured
documentation. Someone has to define a basic hierarchy and rules. Whenever
someone knew or >learned anything that is undocumented, update the docs, so
that others can work coherently. Maybe some of you think there >is some, but
to me (please remember my outsider point of view) it seems very poor.
In simple words, we should force writing docs via commit rules? You are
right to say that documenting is really despised of. What can we do?
Developers here code for fun/knowledge, they arent paid. How can we force
anyone to write docs if that person doesnt want to do it? Introducing such
rules would quickly result in simple equation: undocumented code or no code
at all. Now that`s a great idea.
2) Drivers installation. The drivers needed to run
ReactOS in any hardware
or VM are already available. It is prioritary, at least,
>to have .inf
parsing and adv/setup api working well. If developers can’t start the OS in
the platform they need to test hardly will >anyone be efficient, if does not
leave the effort at all. Of course drivers can fail after succesfully
installed, as so many things, >but bugs in .inf installation are first time
stoppers and need to be addressed asap.
Surprise... it actually works. Please see Supported Hardware wikipage. Its
not simple, it doesn`t work ootb and it would need serious improvements, but
you can actually install ANY driver apart from the one for I/O controller,
as UNIATA is currently hardcoded into registry and not using hdc.inf as it
should be (/me looks at Fireball). I`m not a programmer, yet i managed test
several devices using XP drivers successfully. Anyone could be doing it. The
howto is on our wiki and you can just ask on #reactos for assistance.
3) Bug reporting and tracking database. I’m sure you
all agree regarding
the necessity of a well designed one. Someone has >to do it,
a project like
this can not progress far without it.
http://www.reactos.org/bugzilla/
Regards