Resuscitating MSVC 2008 builds (at least) for testing purposes only :P

[Hermès BÉLUSCA - MAÏTO]

Because I was recently shocked (if I may say :D) that, for building a
2003-class operating system, we need 2010+ tools, I was wondering whether it
was still possible to build ReactOS with MSVC 2008 and 2005. I’ve created a
task for that in Jira: http://jira.reactos.org/browse/CORE-8023 . After
application of the configure.cmd patch that I give in the report, plus few
tweaks in two headers (and adding some stdint.h in the correct directory for
MSVC, needed for compiling host-tools, because this file is not included in
default MSVC installation until MSVC 2010+), I was able to build a full
bootcd and livecd (see the details in the abovementioned report, basically
it currently builds with MSVC 2008 but not 2005). However there happens an
interesting thing: the [boot|live]cd boots (freeldr seems to work and load
the kernel and drivers), but after that, the kernel (debugged in WinDbg)
hangs indefinitely here:
Windows Server 2003 Kernel Version 3790 UP Checked x86 compatible
Built by: 20140326-r62565
Machine Name:
Kernel base = 0x80400000 PsLoadedModuleList = 0x005fcf88
System Uptime: not available
(f:\ros_vs_test\ntoskrnl\ke\i386\cpu.c:494) Supported CPU features :
KF_V86_VIS KF_RDTSC KF_CR4 KF_CMOV KF_GLOBAL_PAGE KF_LARGE_PAGE KF_MTRR
KF_CMPXCHG8B KF_MMX KF_WORKING_PTE KF_PAT KF_FXSR KF_FAST_SYSCALL KF_XMMI
KF_XMMI64 KF_NX_BIT
(f:\ros_vs_test\ntoskrnl\ke\i386\cpu.c:801) Prefetch Cache: 64 bytes L2
Cache: 0 bytes            L2 Cache Line: 64 bytes L2 Cache Associativity: 0
<_hangs_forever_here_>
If some of you have an idea what *might* happen there, I’m all ears!
Cheers,
Hermès.

[Thomas Mueller]

from Hermès BÉLUSCA:
>   Because I was recently shocked (if I may say :D) that,
> for building a
>  2003-class operating system, we need 2010+ tools, I was wondering whether it
>  was still possible to build ReactOS with MSVC 2008 and 2005. I\222ve created a
>  task for that in Jira: http://jira.reactos.org/browse/CORE-8023 . After
>  application of the configure.cmd patch that I give in the report, plus few
>  tweaks in two headers (and adding some stdint.h in the correct directory for
>  MSVC, needed for compiling host-tools, because this file is not included in
>  default MSVC installation until MSVC 2010+), I was able to build a full
>  bootcd and livecd (see the details in the abovementioned report, basically
>  it currently builds with MSVC 2008 but not 2005). However there happens an
>  interesting thing: the [boot|live]cd boots (freeldr seems to work and load
>  the kernel and drivers), but after that, the kernel (debugged in WinDbg)
>  hangs indefinitely here: 
>   Windows Server 2003 Kernel Version 3790 UP Checked x86
> compatible 
>   Built by: 20140326-r62565 
>   Machine Name: 
>   Kernel base = 0x80400000 PsLoadedModuleList =
> 0x005fcf88 
>   System Uptime: not available 
>   (f:\ros_vs_test\ntoskrnl\ke\i386\cpu.c:494) Supported
> CPU features : 
KF_V86_VIS KF_RDTSC KF_CR4 KF_CMOV KF_GLOBAL_PAGE KF_LARGE_PAGE
KF_MTRR
KF_CMPXCHG8B KF_MMX KF_WORKING_PTE KF_PAT KF_FXSR KF_FAST_SYSCALL KF_XMMI
KF_XMMI64 KF_NX_BIT
>   (f:\ros_vs_test\ntoskrnl\ke\i386\cpu.c:801) Prefetch
> Cache: 64 bytes L2
>  Cache: 0 bytes            L2 Cache Line: 64 bytes L2 Cache Associativity: 0 
>   <_hangs_forever_here_> 
>   If some of you have an idea what *might* happen there,
> I\222m all ears! 
Now I see why it may be difficult to impossible to build and install ReactOS on my modern
(2011 and 2013) hardware with new motherboards.
I downloaded and burned ReactOS 0.3.15 ISO install image, but it failed to boot, either on
SATA DVD-RW drive or a CD-RW on an older (July 2001) computer.
I might be able to build ReactOS with ROSBE on FreeBSD or Linux and install perhaps to USB
stick, and find it won't boot.
I have old IDE hard drives, 1271 MB and 40 GB, but access them through USB 2.0 enclosure,
meaning it's like a USB hard drive to the computer.
New hard drives are 3 TB Western Digital Green, GPT-partitioned.
I also notice that on this list, and ros-dev, there is a great tendency to post
multipart/alternative with HTML attachment as opposed to plain text.
Tom