On Sun, Aug 29, 2010 at 6:18 AM, Jeff Cook jeff@deserettechnology.com wrote:
Alexandre is right that the architecture is a lot of work, but I am not asking for him to write out a complete spec, and I don't think the community is, either; the main thing, as far as I can tell, is that the interaction and feedback on a major step forward for WINE has been minimal.
I know it seems frustrating of the lack of response. When I went through the summer of code, the most I got from Alexandre was, 'it doesn't work'. Well what doesn't work? And the honest answer from my own assessment was my engine wasn't finished--which is why I didn't push for a merge then. The school I went to required too much time for me to continue the work, so I put it on hold. That is when Max came in. He found that the code was useful for speeding up his AutoCad. And with the work he has done since then, others have found it useful. So it is not a waste.
The most feedback I was able to find from Alexandre was on May 2009's DIB engine passing all tests thread at http://www.winehq.org/pipermail/wine-devel/2009-May/thread.html#75864 . Alexandre's single major standing complaints seem to be a lack of test cases and Massimo not establishing a good record with simple patches. Are those still valid reasons?
Yes, very much so. The thread shows that there are problems exhibited by the engine which there are no test case for. So passing all tests that have been previously provided are not enough. That would be an area where simple patches can be done.
The dib engine 'blob' outside of the tree might be a maintenance issue for someone with the lack of time, and will be very hard to review. So something else will have to be done to get it mainline, if we ignore the implementation choice at the moment.
But certainly not all is lost. We now know more than we did before.
Jesse