Francois Gouget fgouget@codeweavers.com wrote:
The goal of the Wine tests is to document the Windows behavior that Windows applications expect.
Skipping a test because your VM is broken doesn't qualify as a documentation of Windows behaviour.
The VM is not broken so the skip is ok (thanks for not bringing anything new to the table: it means I don't have to update my answer which makes this simpler).
A test is supposed to pass on a not broken Windows XP configuration, otherwise there wouldn't much point in creating the test.
I don't think that you have resources and intention to have Windows VMs with all possible pre/post SP/hotfixes configurations.
I certainly intend to make it possible for Wine developers to run their tests on most significant Windows configurations and that includes each service pack and Internet Explorer version. It's not as resource intensive as you seem to think (*). Now that's different from the set of Windows configurations that every Wine patch will be run on. That will be a subset decided by the community.
My concern is not about computer resources, I'm sure you have plenty of spare CPU cycles to burn. The concern is about how far are you planning to go, and time it takes to manage. Microsoft releases hotfixes 1-2 times in a month, are you inteding to have VMs for every possible state of SPs+hotfixes? There are already some distinct things in each Windows VM to warry about (video, sound, locale, CD, etc.), so it becomes pretty critical to make wise decisions about what configurations you consider as major, and which of them you really want to manage.