Article on wine development strategy

[Scott Ritchie]

Vincent Povirk wrote:
> Your model makes bugs that show up in only a few applications very
> rare. I've added some to your existing model with duct tape. I
> arbitrarily decided that about 40% of apps would have 1 or 2 unique
> bugs, in addition to the current ones.
> 

You can better model this by just changing the probability distribution 
of the various bugs and using the "alternate" method where each bug has 
an absolute probability of affecting a given app.  Then make about 1000 
bugs have .05% probability or so, and odds are most of them will only 
affect one or two apps (if you have 2500 you're modelling)

> The result is an exponential curve, until about 80% of apps are
> solved. After that, the curve is linear.
> 
> This makes a sort of sense. If we do it right, we're likely to fix the
> bugs that affect a lot of apps before we finish with the ones that
> affect one or two. Once the major bugs are fixed, Wine and Windows
> become comparable to a more "normal" set of different interface
> implementations: largely compatible, but a few developers will
> continue finding subtle differences to rely on forever. The rate at
> which apps hit these differences should be fairly consistent.
> 
> I do wish I had a better way to do this than tacking it on to the
> existing stuff. I think I broke pickNextBug, but fortunately that's
> unused until all apps are solved.
> 
> If you increased the number of very rare (1 or 2 apps) bugs in a less
> crappy way, it might show something smoother.
> 

I'll try my suggested method now.

> I have a feeling that in general the exact shape depends mostly on how
> likely it is for a bug to occur in multiple apps and on how many bugs
> each app has. If a typical app has only a few bugs (the constants
> you've chosen imply that it doesn't), things look very nice at the
> start. If a typical bug affects many apps (the constants you've chosen
> imply that it does), things look very nice at the end.
> 

Yeah, I'll note that whether a typical app has a few bugs or a lot of 
bugs to start with depends on whether we want to model "from the start" 
or from here on out.

Thanks,
Scott Ritchie