October 2005 - Wine-Devel - list.winehq.org

Small CVS-Update-Script

by Gladiac Spark

This is nothing special but may be useful for some people out there having problems updating their cvs-trees or being lazy writing some commands in their console. Copy the 'getwinecvs' to /usr/src or wherever you want (don't forget to edit the SRC=Variable if you're doing so) and chmod it to give you x-rights. (e.g.: 'chmod 750 getwinecvs' without quotes) By running it, it will search for an existing wine-tree... if there is one, it will be cleaned and then updated; if not, the complete tree will be downloaded. When using -c as parameter for getwinecvs, it will automatically begin to compile after getting all the updates and then install. To see what it exactly does, have a look at the source. Even if it is called General CVS-Updater by gladiac it has been written FOR wine. I hope it is helpful for others. I know it's not very nerdy but.... who cares ;).

Oct. 1, 2005

undocumented APIs

by Ivan Leo Puoti

Hello, I would like to make a general appeal to not write wine code based on the docs at undocumented.ntinternals.net, because they're often misleading, incomplete or simply wrong, and do more harm than good. Please refer to "windows nt/2000 native api reference" by Gray Nebbett, to the reactos team, or to me (I've got the book) instead, and always write tests for undocumented functions. Ivan.

Oct. 1, 2005

cannot run a lot of 16 bit apps

by Robbert Xerox

Hi, i'm trying out some apps from the bugzilla database, but in quite some cases i get this error: winevdm: unable to exec 'winbr34.exe': 16-bit support missing I compiled from current cvs without any options, i even tried --enable-win16 but didn't help. Appearently other people _are_ able to run these apps. One example is ftp://ftp.mvpsoft.com/pub/winbr34.exe Anyone could give me a hint how to solve this? I run fc3 (x32) on an athlon64. kernel 2.6.12.3 ___________________________________________________________ To help you stay safe and secure online, we've developed the all new Yahoo! Security Centre. http://uk.security.yahoo.com

Oct. 1, 2005

Re: Release plans

by Francois Gouget

On Sat, 1 Oct 2005, Brian Vincent wrote: > On 10/1/05, Molle Bestefich <molle.bestefich(a)gmail.com> wrote: >> Question is, how do I convey updates to the documentation to you guys? > > Tom described it here: > http://www.winehq.com/?issue=291#Docs%20Needed WineHQ's CVS page should be updated with instructions on how to get the documentation: http://www.winehq.com/site/cvs Btw, why not put the Wine documentation in the same CVS as the Wine sources, Website, the AppDB, etc. It seems like this would simplify explaining how to get it a lot (and it would automatically work with cvsup too). -- Francois Gouget fgouget(a)free.fr http://fgouget.free.fr/ "Utilisateur" (nom commun) : Mot utilisé par les informaticiens en lieu et place d'"idiot".

Oct. 1, 2005

Re: Autoresolving our 554 old UNCONFIRMED bugs

by Dan Kegel

Marcus Meissner wrote: >> http://kegel.com/wine/qa/autoresolve.html > > I am not sure that I like this approach. > It might appear to our users that we do not care. I bet we can word the message to avoid that appearance. We could even have the message simply say Are you still interested in this bug? rather than asking them to retest the bug. That would have nearly the same effect, and sounds a lot nicer. I've updated the page to reflect this more friendly wording. > The timelines are a bit strict too. ;) The message makes it clear that the bug can be reopened at any time. I think that takes away the strictness you're worried about. How do you feel about it with those changes? - Dan -- Trying to get a job as a c++ developer? See http://kegel.com/academy/getting-hired.html

Oct. 1, 2005

Re: Autoresolving our 554 old UNCONFIRMED bugs

by Dan Kegel

Francois Gouget wrote: >> http://kegel.com/wine/qa/autoresolve.html > > Note that the second time you run the query you should only close > unconfirmed bugs that are more than 104 days old and unchanged (this was > ambiguous in your proposal). That's because unconfirmed bugs that are > between 90 and 103 days old have not been notified at that point, or > have not had their two weeks to react. Good point. I've updated the page. -- Trying to get a job as a c++ developer? See http://kegel.com/academy/getting-hired.html

Oct. 1, 2005

Re: Autoresolving our 554 old UNCONFIRMED bugs

by Dan Kegel

Joerg Mayer wrote: >> We will automatically mark your bug as 'resolved' if we don't >> hear from you in the next two weeks. > > Add something like this: > > It doesn't matter if don't find the time to verify the bug right now, > you can always reopen the bug later. Good idea. I've updated the text at http://kegel.com/wine/qa/autoresolve.html Thanks! - Dan -- Trying to get a job as a c++ developer? See http://kegel.com/academy/getting-hired.html

Oct. 1, 2005

Re: Release plans

by Molle Bestefich

On 10/1/05, Dan Kegel <daniel.r.kegel(a)gmail.com> wrote: > On 10/1/05, Molle Bestefich <molle.bestefich(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > 1.) Your web page is a little hard to read. > > Not sure why, maybe it's just that it's 5-guides-in-1 along with > > code samples that makes it hard to get a proper overview. > > Think it would help to break it up into multiple pages? > I'm afraid that would just make it harder to follow. Perhaps - the page does cover a lot of topics that are only loosely related. (Eg. they all fold under 'helping out', but other than that has little in common..) On the other hand, the page is not awfully large, so it might hurt more than it helps. I dunno. That's why I didn't give any concrete suggestions, hehe. But if you insist, I'll try. It'll probably be controversial, remember that I'm totally newbie. My first impression is that of the topics. All of the topics are rather long, which may be a necessity because the topics are disparate, but I immediately just gave up on reading them and started browsing the text instead. Browsing the body text wasn't the easy way out that I had hoped for either :-). Maybe because the chapters are very close together (no spacing above chapter headings), maybe because the code examples does not clearly stand out as such (had they had a frame and a different background color, my eyes would've skipped them in an instant). But most probably just because I didn't know what I was looking for, and it all seemed kind of confusing. Another thing that poked me in the eyes are the large amount of hyperlinks on the page. I immediately thought (when browsing the text) that I'd never have the patience to go through all of those. Since they seemed important to understand what's going on, I sort of gave up early. Maybe it would help to structure all the wine related pages "better"? Perhaps group together pages that have correlation, make sure they're categorized under the same topic, etc., so less links from your page is needed.. Dunno, just an idea, I don't have an overview of the situation at all. Lastly, I'll reiterate my opinion that the tools the Wine project depends upon are inferior from a user interface point of view. Bugzilla and CVS are probably superior in features to Trac and Subversion, but Trac and SVN both win hands down when it comes to usability. The simple search page in Trac gives you a much lower entry barrier for new people, as well does the no-initialization-and-login-process-etc.-required checkout with 'svn co <url> <dir>' compared to the 12-line CVS monstrosity you quote on your page. It might seem stupid to you developers, but I do believe that the easier it is to use, the more people are going to use it. > > 2.) The bugzilla engine that you refer to is hard to use. > > I admit it takes some time to get used to, but I don't think > switching to something else is an option at the moment. Why? Seriously, seems like all the hard work has been done by everybody else. There's a shake'n'bake conversion script, and the installation is a no brainer. Setting things up takes half an hour. Fitting it into the winehq web site design is probably more work, but something a good web developer can overcome. I'll volunteer if nobody else knows HTML/CSS :-). Has there been previous discussion? If so, I'd appreciate a keyword or a pointer! > > I've spent an hour staring at the search page before it struck me: I > > have to put the string "Trillian" in the "Comments" field. > > > > That's just horrid for newbies. > > True! I updated my page to lead newbies through searching > for a particular app's bugs. Have another look at > http://kegel.com/wine/qa/#tools > and let me know if it's any better now. See, that's exactly what I'm talking about :-). You've done a very good job, conveying in as few words as possible exactly what the reader needs to do to make the Bugzilla work. The problem is that the average reader is probably not going to take the time. (S)he's going to look at your page for 5 seconds, and decide that any bug tracking system where the act of searching for an entry containing 'trillian' requires first reading 10 lines of introductory text and then pursuing a link called "Introduction to using Bugzilla with Wine" is not worth their time. Even the wording in that last link is downright scary. It's as if after reading the introductory text to the search engine, there's a larger "Introductory Document", and THEN you may be set to start experimenting with doing freetext searches. That's, hmm, overwhelming. > > Another thing that would help the newbie experience is to, per > > default, change the STATUS field to contain all color and flavors. > > Agreed. That's worth considering. (Any Bugzilla administrators want > to comment?) I hope! <shameless plug> Note that Trac has a google-ish Search page (1 box, although it does support various keywords for advanced stuff) and an entirely different page for doing queries against the database? ;-). </shameless plug ends> Hrm, and last, I'd like to apologize for all the complaining that I do! Sorry...

Oct. 1, 2005

Re: Release plans

by Brian Vincent

On 10/1/05, Molle Bestefich <molle.bestefich(a)gmail.com> wrote: > If anyone has the copy of IDA that the current guide mentions, or know > whether it is functionally equivalent with some other product, please > speak up. That's odd.. Anyway, the filename here has "demo" in it, so I'm not sure if this is the full IDA Pro everyone has used in the past. Uwe would probably know since he seems to use/test it a lot. http://www.download.com/IDA-The-Interactive-Disassembler/3000-2218_4-103615… If that isn't it, maybe one of these will work: http://www.themel.com/idafree.zip http://www.dirfile.com/ida_pro_freeware_version.htm# >From the IDA Pro page about why they don't host it: "The distribution of our freeware version was using insane amounts of bandwdith, several hundreds of them are delivered each day. Here is for example an Analog report for Dec 2002 and Jan 2003 20013: 93.98%: 27/Jan/03 23:18: /freefiles/freeware.zip One of our hopes in distributing this freeware version had been that it would diminish the number "pirate" contacts. Unfortunately, this has not been the case. That is why, after having delivered hundreds of thousands of copies of IDA Freeware, we have decided not to host this file anymore. Note that the IDA Pro freeware license doesn't change : the freeware version remains freeware, and anyone willing to host it is welcome to do so." -Brian

Oct. 1, 2005

Re: Release plans

by Molle Bestefich

On 10/1/05, Brian Vincent <brian.vincent(a)gmail.com> wrote: > On 10/1/05, Molle Bestefich <molle.bestefich(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > Question is, how do I convey updates to the documentation to you guys? > > Tom described it here: > http://www.winehq.com/?issue=291#Docs%20Needed Oops. Thanks! If anyone has the copy of IDA that the current guide mentions, or know whether it is functionally equivalent with some other product, please speak up.

Oct. 1, 2005