[Wine]Crossover and Free/Wine

[James Hawkins]

> So, if so many things work on wine-20040213, then
> how come so many things do NOT work on wine-20041019???

During the course of development and adding new features, bugs are
constantly introduced.  It's the nature of the beast on such a
large-scale project.  While we do try to limit any bugs going in, it
is impossible to spot them all especially when a feature here might
interfere with a very important feature over there.

> I'd like to support the effort, but it's hard to learn
> and hard to make an impact at my level.

The best way is to just jump in and start trying to fix things, even
if you don't know how at first.  You'll send in initial patches that
will probably be turned down, but you'll learn a lot doing this.  An
easy thing you can do is regression testing.  If a feature works in
20040213, then you quasi-binary search to find the patch that
introduced the bug.  Once it is found, you can either try to fix it or
at the very least just let everyone know which patch is causing the
problem.  Check out this link for more info:

http://winehq.org/site/docs/wine-devel/cvs-regression

On Thu, 4 Nov 2004 09:12:45 -0800, Mark Knecht <markknecht at gmail.com> wrote:
> Chris,
>    I understand your question, and to some extent I share your
> frustration. I don't exactly understand the relationship between the
> Crossover folks and the more general wine development community.
> 
>    First, there is clearly sharing going on. There must be since many
> of the bugs in the WineHQ Bugzilla system are assigned to and solved
> by Codeweavers people. To that extent most certainly I think that the
> Open Source version of Wine benefits from the work that Codeweavers
> does.
> 
>    However, and this is what I do not understand, my current version
> of Crossover Office identifies itself as Wine-20040213. (yes...Friday
> the 13th...) ;-)  So, if so many things work on wine-20040213, then
> how come so many things do NOT work on wine-20041019???
> 
>    I understand that Codeweavers has put a lot of work into their
> installer, and for me that is enough of a reason to spend some money
> with them. That program gets my programs installed, and it's not part
> of Wine, so if they are keeping technology secret in that area then
> more power to them. I guess they own it and that's OK with me.
> 
>    However, I am frustrated that so many things that appear to work,
> according to the Wine Application Database won't install for me, much
> less run. So far more than 75% of the programs I've tried recently die
> during install in the debugger.
> 
>    None the less, even if everything I've said is true, and it is
> probably not, I still think Wine is an amazing accomplishment and
> getting better. I'd like to support the effort, but it's hard to learn
> and hard to make an impact at my level.
> 
>    One idea I've had is to start some sort of more useful application
> database. something more along the lines of a table that shows
> applciation on the left and then a bunch of columns representing
> releases of Wine. If we were to have user/owners of each app express a
> willingness to test their one app against a new release of Wine every
> month or so I think we'd have a better idea of what we can, as normal
> users, expect to have work for us. I also think that it's a real shame
> that the Wine App database doesn't include config file modifications
> required to get applications to work. People learn things and then we
> have to Google them out of the Internet and try applying them.
> 
>    I realize that this idea is somewhat like Frank's Corner, and maybe
> it could be done there with some of his help.
> 
>    Anyway, that's my view. Wine is really great when it works.
> 
> - Mark
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Wed, 3 Nov 2004 23:45:38 -0600, Chris Cox <onebeer at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Does the non-free versions of wine known as Codeweavers Crossover ever make it
> > into the free versions?  I really can't justify paying for Codeweavers right
> > now since I only use it every once in a while for one app.  But it sure works
> > a lot nicer than the non-free version.
> >
> > --
> > - Chris
> > Linux 2.6.9-gentoo-r2 i686 AMD Athlon(tm) XP
> >  23:43:35 up 2 days,  8:05,  7 users,  load average: 0.29, 0.32, 0.21
> > _______________________________________________
> > wine-users mailing list
> > wine-users at winehq.org
> > http://www.winehq.org/mailman/listinfo/wine-users
> >
> _______________________________________________
> wine-users mailing list
> wine-users at winehq.org
> http://www.winehq.org/mailman/listinfo/wine-users
> 


-- 
James Hawkins