After tomorrow night I will no longer be recieving mail from the list. I am moving from Swartz Creek Michigan to Dana Point California. I will have internet access when i get there and will get back on the lists as soon as i can.
Once i complete my move to california and get a job, i intend to resume coding on ReactOS. In particular i'd like to get winrar, winzip, and other utilities to work
I would like to take some time and modify the apps in the ros-apps repository to use the latest stable build of mingw + the latest stable build of w32api instead of the reactos build system, is this okay or is there a reason that we are using the ReactOS build system?
So i'll see everybody soon!
Regards, Richard
On Fri, 2003-10-10 at 04:27, Richard Campbell wrote:
I would like to take some time and modify the apps in the ros-apps repository to use the latest stable build of mingw + the latest stable build of w32api instead of the reactos build system, is this okay or is there a reason that we are using the ReactOS build system?
[long-winded analysis followed by a proposal and request for comments]
I've been giving this some thought lately. This is not as trivial of a question as it seems. In the windows world, on the kernel side at least, there is a single approved compiler (i.e. one particular build), which is shipped on the DDK CD. You must use precisely the build environment (compilers, headers, and import libraries) that are shipped in the DDK in order to be supported by Microsoft and/or the community.
Linux used to require GCC 2.7.2.3 - i don't know what it asks for now, but the reason had to do with a combination of compiler bugs that had been worked around and some insulation against future upsetting changes.
On the flip side, Royce Mitchell used to say that he preferred to use an old GCC to build ROS with because it caught different coding errors, and lots of people (myself included) believe that we should not be tied to a compiler because that makes us dangerously dependant on that compiler. Also, MSVC and Intel both generate better code in certain circumstances (see a recent Doctor Dobb's article for a c++ comparison among those three and others).
The current source tree doesn't support MSVC in a few places (I know NDIS, for sure, won't compile right, and I remember seeing others), so for the moment we really are MinGW-dependant. I also worry about people getting a random compiler/w32api/whatever, having problems, and getting a bad impression of the project due to a broken build - and the way it breaks will look ugly most of the time. The final straw for me, though, is that we can't do some things like enabling -Werror in our makefiles because we're afraid we'll break people's builds.
With that said, I propose that we go the Microsoft route, but provide instructions for people that want to experiment with other stuff. We should have an official version of the compiler, linker, binutils, etc, and an official w32api version. If anybody has time, it'd be nice to package the ReactOS SDK/DDK with the tools, headers, libs, and so on, so that new developers can come up to speed more quickly.
So, what does everyone else think?
-Vizzini
On Fri, 10 Oct 2003 10:34:07 -0500 Vizzini vizzini@plasmic.com wrote:
[snip]
Linux used to require GCC 2.7.2.3 - i don't know what it asks for now, but the reason had to do with a combination of compiler bugs that had been worked around and some insulation against future upsetting changes.
Hmmm, that was a long time ago, you must be almost as old as I am ;-) Anyway, IIRC that was during the EGCS fork and the linux kernel would not compile on that beast. Later when EGCS and GCC hadmerged again and the GCC 3.x series was being developed, the linux kernel still required GCC 2.95. Today many packages require patches for compilation with GCC 3.3.x.
To make a long story short, dependancy on a certain building environment is very common. ReactOS is no exception.
[snip]
With that said, I propose that we go the Microsoft route, but provide instructions for people that want to experiment with other stuff. We should have an official version of the compiler, linker, binutils, etc, and an official w32api version. If anybody has time, it'd be nice to package the ReactOS SDK/DDK with the tools, headers, libs, and so on, so that new developers can come up to speed more quickly.
At present the tools et al are available in separate packages from the ReactOS website. IMO repackaging into a development kit is a good idea.
- Guido
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On Sat, 11 Oct 2003, Guido wrote:
At present the tools et al are available in separate packages from the ReactOS website. IMO repackaging into a development kit is a good idea.
Is there any way that we can have a devel kit released both for Windows and for Linux, for ReactOS?
Or are those of us still using Linux to work with this, going to be stuck with it? :-P
Later, Mike
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I think we should only the latest stable Mingw release is. When Filip and I have done porting work on WINE and the w32api I have always tried to leave any of my changes as disabled untill the latest w32api release. I am always sending minor patches to mingw for the w32api and the ReactOS developer shouldnt have to keep up with those. Any code that goes in to the development or release trunck should always be able to be built with the latest stable releases or it should be disabled.
That being said I think on a per driver/dll or per application basis we can support MS_VC with the PSDK. Some of our drivers, ntoskrnl and other misc stuff wont build on other compilers due to gccisms. We really should attempt to get all drivers/dlls/apps to build and work on WinNT/2K though using MS_VC.
Thanks Steven
--- Vizzini vizzini@plasmic.com wrote:
With that said, I propose that we go the Microsoft route, but provide instructions for people that want to experiment with other stuff. We should have an official version of the compiler, linker, binutils, etc, and an official w32api version. If anybody has time, it'd be nice to package the ReactOS SDK/DDK with the tools, headers, libs, and so on, so that new developers can come up to speed more quickly.
So, what does everyone else think?
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Guido -
Michael B. Trausch -
Richard Campbell -
Steven Edwards -
Vizzini