w9x testbot state?

[Michael Stefaniuc]

Hello Max,

I'm pretty sure you are trolling but with Alexandre on vacation it is
pretty quiet anyway, so I'll feed you...

On 08/08/2011 07:36 PM, max wrote:
> If I understand the philosophy of Wine correctly, it is to provide an 
> alternative to
> the Microsoft implementation of the platform.  The criteria for success
> is that
> applications written to run on the current Microsoft platform can run on
> Wine.  To
Wine cares only about running the application written for the Windows
platform. It does *NOT* try to fully implement any particular Windows
version.

> that end mandatory support for the Windows 9X and other older versions was
> removed from the patch acceptance test procedure.  The test procedures
> were also
> to be simplified when a change touched on one of the special cases where
> the
> special provisions for older versions was part of a test.
> 
> However, certain things were not to be done:
> 
> The ABILITY to test under older versions is to be retained.  Such
> testing is
> no longer required, but the tests are supposed to be available on request.
You didn't pay attention to wine-devel. The Win9x VMs were running on a
machine at Ge's house and Ge passed away a few months ago. As soon as
the WTB finds a new home the Win9x VMs will be enabled.

> Simply removing support for older versions in tests is not sufficient
> reason for
> changing a test.  Something else about the test has to change before
> there is
> justification of stripping out special case code.
Again you didn't pay attention. It was removing broken() and test skips
for Win9x which didn't run in any way form or shape on Win9x. And adding
those skips and broken was basically a Sisyphus work, it kept Paul
Vriens busy without ever catching up. If you feel like it you can still
cut and paste the tests out you are particularly interested in.

> Gratuitous removal of support for older versions in the actual Wine code is
> not acceptable.  There has to be a reason for breaking support of older
> applications.
I'm not sure in which Universe you live but in this one Wine cares about
Win16 and even the venerable DOS applications. Thus it seems kinda
unlikely that Wine removes support for Win9x. Go check the git commits.

> We are NOT trying to support Microsoft's effort to force their customers
> to upgrade
> to new versions of Microsoft's products.  In fact, my understanding is
> that Wine is
> intended to provide an 'as good as or better' alternative to Microsoft. 
> Efforts to
> improve Wine's ability to support current applications is very
> important, but supporting
> older applications is also useful.
Exactly. You too can help with this effort! Test those old applications
and submit patches.

bye
	michael