Re: API test suite

[Andriy Palamarchuk]

Hi Chris,
  thank you for suggesting the help.

Preferred method of contacting Wine developers is
posting to mailing list wine-devel. In this way
everybody can participate in the discussion and the
conversation will be documented for later reference.
See www.winehq.com how to join the list. I forward my
response to the mailing list.

Chris Caston wrote:
> I have volunteered myself to help test Windows
> functions for 
> compatibility with WINE. I'm am not one of the
> WIndows programmers but I 
> intend to take responsibility for many of the
> functions to be checked 
> and to keep track of functions (perhaps even
> developers) and their 
> status in a database. As well a setup assocation to
> e-mail results to 
> other important people.

You are welcome! You can learn Windows programming
while creating the tests.

Knowing answers for these questions I can better help
you:
What is your programming experience?
Do you have any Windows develoment tools?
What operation systems do you currently use (Windows,
Linux)?
> Could be so kind to shed some light on the API test
> suite. Firstly, how 
> well documented are these functions?
>
> I'm getting conflicting information in this issue.
> Some people say that 
> the Win32 API is obscured and kept closed while
> others say that it is 
> one of the most throughly documented API's in use
> today with many books 
> about programming in this environment and
> information on the MSDN site.

On one hand there are a lot of documentation about
Win32 API, on other hand the documentation is often
misleading, there is a set of API which is not
documented at all and some programs, especially
Microsoft products (IE, Office), tend to use it.

Don't warry about this. We don't have any tests. Start
with writing tests for well-documented API, document
the cases when Win32 API behaviour differs from the
documentation.
> I have found a page that lists 350+ functions:
>
> http://www.vbapi.com/ref/funca.html

Before somebody mentioned that Windows has more than
12,000 API functions :-)

MSDN (msdn.microsoft.com) is the best source of
information about Windows API. You also can find a lot
of information on the Net. Some references are listed
on www.winehq.com.
> Secondly, what mechanisms are being used for the
> test suite?

We are going to use tests, written in C and Perl.
> Have these yet been agreed on?

Kind of - we already finished *very* active discussion
on the topic :-)
Perl and C frameworks and tests conventions are under
development. If you are interested, see thread "Re: We
*really* need a development model change !" and a few
other threads for details.
> Do you have some test functions already written that
> I can see?

Yes, the Perl framework with sample test is already in
Wine code repository in programs/winetest directory.
You can browse Wine source online at:
http://cvs.winehq.com/cvsweb/

I have C testing framework, but it is not in CVS yet.

Alexandre, what is the status of C testing framework?
Do you want me to submit the latest version I have
(without using the _T macro) for including in CVS?

The process of tests development, especially on
Windows, is not created yet.
> How can I learn the processes involved?

The development process is described on
www.winehq.com. Please, read the documentation
presented there.

Good luck.

Andriy Palamarchuk

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