Minutes from 10.27.2011 - Ros-dev

30 Oct 2011


      Hello all,
Here are the minutes from the last ReactOS meeting on the 27th of October
2011:
20:20 	Aleksey Bragin called the meeting to order
- 	Aleksey Bragin shared a video interview about ReactOS at
http://alenapopova.ru/egov/react-os-kraudsorsing-pri-sozdanii-operacionnoj-s...
-	Aleksey Bragin stated the meeting agenda as being:
    	1. Website revamp status
    	2. CMake adoption
    	3. Release status
1. Website Revamp
-----------------
-  	Amine Khaldi started on the Website revamp status and stated that
unfortunately nothing has progressed since the last meeting because of
aross, superdog and nisky being extremely busy.
-	He also stated that Aleksey has yet to commit the bridges needed and
that the actual milestone is the theme (ie design/layout that matches
the current website), after which devs will need to investigate phpbb
issue.
-	Aleksey Bragin added that almost the only thing left is the theme
and with it progress could be made fast to the website engine and have
a test run with real data.
-	He also stated that all details could be provided to anyone
motivated enough with HTML/CSS.
-	Matthias Kupfer said he could support HTML/CSS around Christmas, but
not earlier.
-	Aleksey Bragin asked Maciej Bialas if he could assist in theming.
-	Maciej Bialas said he could, and added that he tried to create a
simple theme first resembling the current one, and that aross said he
could have done better by using some Drupal modules Maciej was not
aware of.
-	Aleksey Bragin stated that a simple theme would suffice for now and
a better one can always be done later.
-	Ziliang Guo asked about user and forum transfer status.
-	Aleksey Bragin replied that the forum is phpbb and therefore easily
transferable
-	Ziliang Guo asked about the reason for sticking with phpbb.
- 	Amine Khaldi and Aleksey Bragin stated that it was for the sake of
easier migration (ie migrate one thing at a time not everything at
once)
-	Maciej Bialas stated that one downside to this was tedious
integration with phpbb.
-	Aleksey Bragin pointed out that playground.reactos.org (with its
intact database) will be what the new main site looks like when the
switch is made.
-	Ziliang Guo said he can start trying to add content the coming weekend.
-	Amine Khaldi asked Ziliang Guo to keep everything minimalistic.
-	Aleksey Bragin moved the meeting on to the CMake adoption topic on the agenda.
2. CMake adoption
--------------------
-	Aleksey Bragin took this chance to welcome Alex Ionescu back to the
ReactOS project.
-	Amine Khaldi stated that Alex Ionescu stumbled upon a way to
separate debug info from binaries, in a pdb similar way, using
objcopy. He also mentioned that Alex helped by fixing two bugs in
windmc and windres.
-	He went on to say that Alex suggested that we go back to using
dwarf-2, only this time with pdb style debug, and with an improved,
out of the kernel, symbols handling. He mentioned that Thomas Faber
was kind enough to sketch a batch script that takes a debug log and
translates the addresses inside it.
-	Amine Khaldi further stated that with the script + the CMake changes
to take account of windres and objcopy, we'll be able to reduce the
iso size, reduce the memory footprint, reduce the disk space needed to
compile, use windres alone and get rid of handling symbols in the
kernel (something "no other OS does" as Alex describes it).
-	He then explained that, on the RosBE level, this will only require
updating binutils (gcc will stay at 4.4.3) with the patched windres
and windmc, and it will also require the translating script to be part
of RosBE.
A discussion ensued about testing the new RosBE and the following
conclusions where reached:
    - Have a new Build Environment Release Candidate (2.0) which is an
update to binutils (ld, windres, windmc, addr2line... etc) until the
next meeting.
    - Keep the 4.4.3 version of gcc until the next meeting.
-	Alex Ionescu suggested having the new RosBE ready by the time of the
next release. He also noted that this does not mean the new BE will be
released along with the next version of ReactOS, but that it must be
ready by then.
-	Cameron Gutman then brought up the issue of switching to gcc 4.6,
but it was decided to keep gcc 4.4.3 until after the next release.
-	Thomas Faber then suggested an outlined step by step plan:
    	1) Update BE
    	2) Release new version of ReactOS (0.3.14)
    	3) Get rid of wrc
    	4) Get rid of rbuild
    	5) Switch to dwarf
    	6) Adopt new compiler (gcc 4.6)
    After some deliberating it was agreed upon that Thomas Faber's
proposed course of action is the best way to go, and his proposal was
accepted.
-	Amine Khaldi then moved the meeting to the next topic
3. Release status
--------------------
-	Cameron Gutman inquired about the progress on the heap regression issue.
-	Thomas Faber stated that although he himself hasn't made much
progress because he is very busy during the week, Jerome has been
tracking it down pretty well and that it is apparently caused by
resource loading.
-	Amine Khaldi took this chance too thank everyone for the awesome
bugfixing phase, and stated that a lot of bugs has been fixed and a
lot of regression has been addressed. He also went on to thank
testers, and outlined the importance they have, and stated that he
hopes this will be the mentality of the ReactOS project team, as
thanks to it ReactOS is improving a lot.
-	He went on to say that as far as the remaining blockers are
concerned, more team work on fixing them is needed, as this has proved
very effective in the past. He also added that Jim Tabor did a good
one man job on the jre issue, but that the other issues could use some
teaming up.
-	Aleksey Bragin further added to this that ReactOS is on the way to
possibly one of the best releases, and that after years have passed
everyone is working towards the same goal, which, he added, is
fantastic.
-	Cameron Gutman agreed that ReactOS is indeed very stable now,
especially in kernel mode.
-	Olaf Siejka went on to sum up that entering the release stage would
require at the very least fixing mshtml bug and fixing ldr
regressions.
-	Aleksey Bragin agreed with Olaf Siejka on that point.
-	Kamil Hornicek inquired about the official stance about hackfixing
certain bugs.
-	Aleksey Bragin and Amine Khaldi both explained that while hackfixing
should be avoided, there are some bugs which cannot be resolved in a
timely fashion. But hackfixing these should clearly be reflected in
the commit message and comments in the code.
-	Amine Khaldi went on to ask for a more visible teaming up, for
example on IRC and through bug reports, and to also request marking
bugs as assigned when devs take them. He mentioned that since the
release blockers remained unassigned for a while, it was difficult at
times to keep track of who is working on what.
-	Cameron Gutman inquired if anybody objects to modifying the default
color depth from 16-bit to 32-bit.
-	Olaf Siejka raised some concerns about this as it will affect QEMU
since it does not support 32bpp.
-	Cameron Cutman further inquired about the possibility of falling
back more gracefully as far as color depth is concerned when a video
card does not support a certain resolution (right now it falls back
directly to 8bpp). He went further to ask Timo Kreuzer if this is
standard windows behavior.
-	Timo Kreuzer said he would need to investigate this issue.
-	Aleksey Bragin formally ended the meeting, thanking everyone for
their time and information.
Minutes by Claudiu Mihail.