-----Original Message-----
From: alex@centroidcafe.com Sent: Feb 11, 2009 10:59 AM To: wine-devel@winehq.org Subject: Re: An idea for the appdb
Sorry .. forgot to reply all.
Automatic submission of test data could be a very handy tool. Scenario: User A tries to run an application, it crashes due to bugs in Wine. User A elects to submit data. Sometime in the future, User B tries to run the same application under a similar configuration. It crashes also, but User B being a sly user figures out what DLL overrides, patches, etc. allow this app to progress past the original crash point. Wine detects this and collects the information. Now when User C tries to run this app, Wine displays a message like: "This application has been known to fail under the current configuration. However, workarounds have been discovered that may yield greater success. <link to AppDB>"
This would be great, but as previously discussed, who would maintain this information and verify it is correct and proper? Although some features would be 'neet to have' it is best to leave them on the drawing board for now and work on the various bugs that require workarounds. This is because of two limited resources: People and Time. If you have the skills to implement this feature, go ahead and try on a limited database on your home system. You would quickly see that we have about 10,000 applications in the AppDB and there are many versions of Wine. This gives you some starting point of the size of this task. Supporting a few applications would lead to the 'why isn't my wiz-bang application there' and a great deal of discussion, wasting more resources.
Of course, if you could produce something that would emulate the "Report to ...." functionality that is in popular use, that would help keep the AppDB and Bugzilla up to date as long as a search capability were added to sweep these systems for pre-existing entries related to the current problem.
Just my opinion, but this project is not worth attempting at this point.
James McKenzie
On Wed, 11 Feb 2009 13:03:21 -0700 (GMT-07:00), James Mckenzie jjmckenzie51@earthlink.net wrote:
Automatic submission of test data could be a very handy tool.
This would be great, but as previously discussed, who would maintain this information and verify it is correct and proper? Although some features would be 'neet to have' it is best to leave them on the drawing board for now and work on the various bugs that require workarounds. This is because of two limited resources: People and Time. If you have the skills to implement this feature, go ahead and try on a limited database on your home system. You would quickly see that we have about 10,000 applications in the AppDB and there are many versions of Wine.
Ten thousand records in a database is not very significant. My day job is DBA, so I might have the skills to tackle something like this (at least in part).
This gives you some starting point of the size of this task. Supporting a few applications would lead to
the
'why isn't my wiz-bang application there' and a great deal of discussion, wasting more resources.
Of course, if you could produce something that would emulate the "Report to ...." functionality that is in popular use, that would help keep the AppDB and Bugzilla up to date as long as a search capability were added to sweep these systems for pre-existing entries related to the current problem.
This was what I was thinking. Microsoft does this in Windows, and they are the reference implementation of the Wine API. If collecting this data helps M$ debug Windows, then I would think it would certainly help Wine too.
Just my opinion, but this project is not worth attempting at this point.
If that is the consensus, then I won't bother looking into this further. However, it seems like there is currently a movement to rework AppDB anyway, so why not consider this idea now, so it could be factored into those plans?
-Alex
On Wed, Feb 11, 2009 at 2:33 PM, alex@centroidcafe.com wrote:
On Wed, 11 Feb 2009 13:03:21 -0700 (GMT-07:00), James Mckenzie jjmckenzie51@earthlink.net wrote:
Automatic submission of test data could be a very handy tool.
This would be great, but as previously discussed, who would maintain this information and verify it is correct and proper? Although some features would be 'neet to have' it is best to leave them on the drawing board for now and work on the various bugs that require workarounds. This is because of two limited resources: People and Time. If you have the skills to implement this feature, go ahead and try on a limited database on your home system. You would quickly see that we have about 10,000 applications in the AppDB and there are many versions of Wine.
Ten thousand records in a database is not very significant. My day job is DBA, so I might have the skills to tackle something like this (at least in part).
This gives you some starting point of the size of this task. Supporting a few applications would lead to
the
'why isn't my wiz-bang application there' and a great deal of discussion, wasting more resources.
Of course, if you could produce something that would emulate the "Report to ...." functionality that is in popular use, that would help keep the AppDB and Bugzilla up to date as long as a search capability were added to sweep these systems for pre-existing entries related to the current problem.
This was what I was thinking. Microsoft does this in Windows, and they are the reference implementation of the Wine API. If collecting this data helps M$ debug Windows, then I would think it would certainly help Wine too.
Just my opinion, but this project is not worth attempting at this point.
If that is the consensus, then I won't bother looking into this further. However, it seems like there is currently a movement to rework AppDB anyway, so why not consider this idea now, so it could be factored into those plans?
-Alex
Why not just write a external utility (perhaps with a bit of support from AppDB for mapping exe's to applications) so that a GUI user could just right click->AppDB and have their browser fire up? That'd be neat, much less complex, and completely non-invasive. --Murph
2009/2/11 Matt 'Murph' Finnicum mattfinn@gmail.com:
On Wed, Feb 11, 2009 at 2:33 PM, alex@centroidcafe.com wrote:
On Wed, 11 Feb 2009 13:03:21 -0700 (GMT-07:00), James Mckenzie jjmckenzie51@earthlink.net wrote:
Automatic submission of test data could be a very handy tool.
This would be great, but as previously discussed, who would maintain this information and verify it is correct and proper? Although some features would be 'neet to have' it is best to leave them on the drawing board for now and work on the various bugs that require workarounds. This is because of two limited resources: People and Time. If you have the skills to implement this feature, go ahead and try on a limited database on your home system. You would quickly see that we have about 10,000 applications in the AppDB and there are many versions of Wine.
Ten thousand records in a database is not very significant. My day job is DBA, so I might have the skills to tackle something like this (at least in part).
This gives you some starting point of the size of this task. Supporting a few applications would lead to
the
'why isn't my wiz-bang application there' and a great deal of discussion, wasting more resources.
Of course, if you could produce something that would emulate the "Report to ...." functionality that is in popular use, that would help keep the AppDB and Bugzilla up to date as long as a search capability were added to sweep these systems for pre-existing entries related to the current problem.
This was what I was thinking. Microsoft does this in Windows, and they are the reference implementation of the Wine API. If collecting this data helps M$ debug Windows, then I would think it would certainly help Wine too.
Just my opinion, but this project is not worth attempting at this point.
If that is the consensus, then I won't bother looking into this further. However, it seems like there is currently a movement to rework AppDB anyway, so why not consider this idea now, so it could be factored into those plans?
-Alex
Why not just write a external utility (perhaps with a bit of support from AppDB for mapping exe's to applications) so that a GUI user could just right click->AppDB and have their browser fire up? That'd be neat, much less complex, and completely non-invasive. --Murph
We'd still need some way to map the exe to the app in the appdb, which brings us back to my checksum idea. Is there any chance that the appdb could allow for application checksums to be stored alongside version entries? Even if nothing is done with the information in the near future, it could prove useful.
Luke.
Please correct me if I'm wrong but before we go about collecting all this information wouldn't it be better to have some compatibility framework in Wine that could actually make use of it? Otherwise we're collecting a lot of information that is of little immediate use.
In other words we'd have somewhere for this flood to go before we open the dam?
Regards, --John Klehm
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alex＠centroidcafe.com -
James Mckenzie -
John Klehm -
Luke Benstead -
Matt 'Murph' Finnicum