[Wine]Wine-20050524 problem

[Scott Ritchie]

On Thu, 2005-06-16 at 14:56 -0400, Shadi Khasawneh wrote:
> I was talking in general and not about Lotus Notes in specific.  But there
> should be a way to test
> basic functionality. For example, the DirectX test program in MS Windows
> which draws a triangle on the screen
> and rotate it; It does NOT test everything, or every program/game that uses
> it - it tests basic and
> most common functions using different inputs and making sure that the
> output  for each function
> is what is required.
> 

Wine already has a rather comprehensive test sweet - it's just
incomplete.  Writing conformance tests for various parts of the API to
make sure they don't cause a regression whenever someone releases a
patch is a huge open task right now.

Fortunately, it's an open task that just about anyone with knowledge of
the API can do - there's no need to understand much about Wine
internals, since all the test programs do is test input and output.
We've even had students submit conformance tests for credit as part of
their computer science classes - and had them uploaded to the project.

> Lotus Notes failed because there is some specific function (among the many
> Windows API functions
> that WINE implements) has not been fully implemented yet in WINE or has
> some BUG. So there should
> be a way to test these basic functions (at the API level maybe) - Also a
> fixed number of applications that
> uses different types of libraries/functionalities provided by Windows can
> be tested for each
> release (not through CVS): One game,  one network application, one word
> processing application... etc
> 

We recognized long ago that regressions can be a serious problem for
Wine.  Unfortunately, as Holly points out, not every developer can test
every application at every release - this is why we've created the
Application's Database, which allows just about anyone to sign up as a
maintainer for an app.

Maintaining an app is rather simple - just run it and see if it gets any
worse.  If it does, email the wine-devel list.  This is described in the
helping applications work guide on the site.

> Again, it is only a suggestion; others may provide a better way or
> alternative to this. I agree that we should be
> submitting BUGS to the Bugzilla instead of only submitting it to mailing
> list.
> 
> Finally, WINE might not be a huge project, as you said, but WINE developers
> are doing a huge and important work.
> All the best!
> 

:)

Thanks,
Scott Ritchie