Bug for beginners

[Stephen Eilert]

On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 12:58 AM, Andrew Eikum
<andrew at brightnightgames.com>wrote:

> Alexandros Dermenakis wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I studied the wine developer's guide and went a bit through the code. I
>> would like a suggestion, a bug to start understanding better the structure
>> of wine and familiarize myself with it in order to be able to contribute
>> more in the future.
>>
>> thank you
>>
>>
> Hi Alexandros,
>
> When I began working on Wine, I found that the easiest way for me was to
> implement parts of Wine that have no implementation yet.  Implementing new
> functions means you don't have to worry about breaking old tests or
> re-arranging and understanding someone else's code.  It also gives you the
> opportunity to write new tests from the ground up, so you get used to
> exactly what the unit tests are for and how they work.
>
> Look around in Wine for functions that are labeled with FIXMEs indicating
> that they are stubs, or look in the .spec files for functions declared as
> stubs.  Find a function that has an easy to understand purpose: a very clear
> input and output.  Then, write unit tests in that DLL's test suite that
> prove all of the important features of that function.  Run your tests on an
> actual Windows OS (look into "crosstests") and verify that they are correct.
>  Finally, implement that function in Wine to make it also pass your tests.
>
> If you want a suggestion for where to look for small stubs, take a look at
> gdi32 and gdiplus.  I know they still have some smallish, unimplemented or
> half-implemented functions.  If graphics don't interest you, there are
> plenty of stubs elsewhere.
>
> Once you've got the hang of how the unit tests work (I mean it, the test
> cases are the most important part of getting patches into Wine), try looking
> into bugs on WineHQ until you find one you think you might be able to
> handle.  Then gear up for the most fun you'll ever have reading pages and
> pages debug logs :)
>
> No matter where you begin your work, remember that Wine is a difficult
> project to work on.  Because even very subtle changes can cause breakages in
> seemingly unrelated parts of Wine, the standard for patches is very high.
>  You will need to prove that your patch is correct using the test suites.
>  No provable tests means it's not getting in.
>
> Good luck and thanks for your interest,
> Andrew
>
>
>
As I understand from Wine's policies, functions should only be implemented
if an application requires them. If that's correct, a random search for
stubs isn't a good idea, because the follow up question would be "which
application requires this function?".


--Stephen

programmer, n:
       A red eyed, mumbling mammal capable of conversing with inanimate
monsters.
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