I recently took the list of applications from headquarters that are listed as running properly and found that many of these are available for little cost. I bought a few and tried to run them. Not a one ran as is from the box. I was able to get all of them to run with some trouble. One big problem I see with Wine is that there is no good testing. As versions progress things quit running and the author has no way of knowing. I have no good solution for this problem but I suspect that it needs attention. It is, of course, part of the documentation problem. It is not in the nature of programmers to document their work.
On 5/9/05, gslink gslink@one.net wrote:
I recently took the list of applications from headquarters that are listed as running properly and found that many of these are available for little cost. I bought a few and tried to run them. Not a one ran as is from the box. I was able to get all of them to run with some trouble. One big problem I see with Wine is that there is no good testing. As versions progress things quit running and the author has no way of knowing. I have no good solution for this problem but I suspect that it needs attention. It is, of course, part of the documentation problem. It is not in the nature of programmers to document their work.
Where would this list be? As of now there is no list of applications we try to keep working with every released snapshot. So developers are not required to check their changes against certain applications. What we do have is a large set of small test applications we run after changes.
Paul
Paul van Schayck wrote:
On 5/9/05, gslink gslink@one.net wrote:
I recently took the list of applications from headquarters that are listed as running properly and found that many of these are available for little cost. I bought a few and tried to run them. Not a one ran as is from the box. I was able to get all of them to run with some trouble. One big problem I see with Wine is that there is no good testing. As versions progress things quit running and the author has no way of knowing. I have no good solution for this problem but I suspect that it needs attention. It is, of course, part of the documentation problem. It is not in the nature of programmers to document their work.
Where would this list be? As of now there is no list of applications we try to keep working with every released snapshot. So developers are not required to check their changes against certain applications. What we do have is a large set of small test applications we run after changes.
Paul
Go to the Wine HQ site and click on applications database. If you need more applications check the listed links. This is a problem with every development effort and nobody is blaming anybody. The larger the effort the worse it gets. This is probably the worst problem both Microsoft and IBM have with code. If you change anything in Wine something somewhere will probably quit running. This is simply the price of progress. My comment, and it is not a criticism, is that Wine still has rough edges. Eventually these will go away but for now, you can't simply load Wine into Linux and blindly start loading in applications. The more complex the application the more likely it needs setup. As versions progress setup procedures change and as a result things quit running. Microsoft Office doesn't run without setup and neither do many of the older games such as Alice or Rune. Even things like Warcraft come and go. This is not a criticism it is just the way things are and that is why I think it is too early to start thinking about commercial support. What somebody needs to do now is to get a relationship with IBM similar to the one that Eclipse has. IBM has a problem currently because there is no native Lotus Notes client for Linux. Wine could easily solve this problem. I talked to some of the marketing managers in IBM and most had never heard of Wine. The IBM development labs are currently starting to develop this native client. If IBM could use Wine it could save them money and sueing Wine is one thing sueing IBM is another.
On Monday 09 May 2005 16:11, you wrote:
Paul van Schayck wrote:
Where would this list be? As of now there is no list of applications we try to keep working with every released snapshot. [...]
Go to the Wine HQ site and click on applications database.
I think Paul wanted to know the subset of AppDB entries that "one might wish" be checked as part of the tagging process.
I'd suggest that this metadata should be stored within AppDB, perhaps as the user-rating, or as an external keyword: SNAPSHOT_TEST_APP for example.
[...]
If you change anything in Wine something somewhere will probably quit running.
We live in an imperfect world, so could well be true. But such breakages should (in an ideal world) be picked up and fixed. Changes are trying to implement new functionality, so if apps break as a result, then the patch is broken in some sense.
The issue is about timescales, both with discovery and fixing the problems. I guess both will depend about how much developers care about the broken applications or the way in which they're broken.
(this is where having application-level regression testing would be handy ;^)
[...]
The more complex the application the more likely it needs setup. As versions progress setup procedures change and as a result things quit running. Microsoft Office doesn't run without setup and neither do many of the older games such as Alice or Rune.
I think this is a transitional effect. Once we get a 0.9 release, configuration should become more stable.
What somebody needs to do now is to get a relationship with IBM similar to the one that Eclipse has. IBM has a problem currently because there is no native Lotus Notes client for Linux. Wine could easily solve this problem. I talked to some of the marketing managers in IBM and most had never heard of Wine. The IBM development labs are currently starting to develop this native client. If IBM could use Wine it could save them money and sueing Wine is one thing sueing IBM is another.
Rumour has it (i.e. I can't put my finger on the source) that IBM do use Wine internally. Their marketing people may not know this, though.
Cheers,
Paul.
Paul Millar wrote:
On Monday 09 May 2005 16:11, you wrote:
Paul van Schayck wrote:
Where would this list be? As of now there is no list of applications we try to keep working with every released snapshot. [...]
Go to the Wine HQ site and click on applications database.
I think Paul wanted to know the subset of AppDB entries that "one might wish" be checked as part of the tagging process.
I'd suggest that this metadata should be stored within AppDB, perhaps as the user-rating, or as an external keyword: SNAPSHOT_TEST_APP for example.
[...]
If you change anything in Wine something somewhere will probably quit running.
We live in an imperfect world, so could well be true. But such breakages should (in an ideal world) be picked up and fixed. Changes are trying to implement new functionality, so if apps break as a result, then the patch is broken in some sense.
The issue is about timescales, both with discovery and fixing the problems. I guess both will depend about how much developers care about the broken applications or the way in which they're broken.
(this is where having application-level regression testing would be handy ;^)
[...]
The more complex the application the more likely it needs setup. As versions progress setup procedures change and as a result things quit running. Microsoft Office doesn't run without setup and neither do many of the older games such as Alice or Rune.
I think this is a transitional effect. Once we get a 0.9 release, configuration should become more stable.
What somebody needs to do now is to get a relationship with IBM similar to the one that Eclipse has. IBM has a problem currently because there is no native Lotus Notes client for Linux. Wine could easily solve this problem. I talked to some of the marketing managers in IBM and most had never heard of Wine. The IBM development labs are currently starting to develop this native client. If IBM could use Wine it could save them money and sueing Wine is one thing sueing IBM is another.
Rumour has it (i.e. I can't put my finger on the source) that IBM do use Wine internally. Their marketing people may not know this, though.
Cheers,
Paul.
You say it better than I. I agree. I think Wine is headed correctly. Attention is being paid to a test suite and as the interface becomes more stable then the quirks of some of these programs can be ironed out. That is exactly the way things should be working but let's not forget many if not most applications cannot now be run without some setup and the necessary setup may be undocumented. At best the setup is different from a setup under Windows. By the way, since Watson marketing has run IBM. If marketing doesn't know about it it doesn't exist. That is one of the keys to IBM success so it must be correct.
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gslink -
Paul Millar -
Paul van Schayck