[Wine]Wine-20050524 problem

[Joachim von Thadden]

Am Do, Jun 16, 2005 at 02:56:34 -0400 schrieb Shadi Khasawneh:
> 
> I was talking in general and not about Lotus Notes in specific.  But there
> should be a way to test

This topic is something more for the dev list.

To give a short answer: This is already done by the developer team.

To give a long answer: The Windows API is baroque, incredible redundant
and fail save in a very screwed up way. So there is not only one way to
call an function and to give it parameters or to get results. Most of
these ways are not documented and also the documented way not alway
works the specified way or is simply buggy.

As you can think, these many variants lead to as many variants of usage.
So there are not simple tests to do, there are hundreds to do. And you
have to do the tests on Windows as well to see the results. This is also
done by the developers and some helpers.

But you have to know that a program might fail in one function only
reacting slightly different and so making the whole program unusable.
As there are so many ways to use the API the only true test is to run
programs... and this is why users should use the bug tracking system to
describe the bugs. This is the only true test!

Your suggestion to test with some specific programs, one for each of
some defined area, will only test exactly these programs. If they work
you have not won more than to know that your version works with these
programs. You can not say a word out of that about other programs. An
example: wine-20050419 worked with Excel, Access, Powerpoint, Outlook.
But it broke WinWord! Hey, they come from the same company, using the
same built system, same compilers and even the same base libraries.

To come out of this API mess, the programmers at CodeWeavers
concentrate on specific applications that are useful for many users.
I have a similar approach with WineTools, trying to add apps as I have
time to.

And yes, Wine *is* a huge project and a high mountain to climb: It is
implementing the Windows API! There is only one company in the world
that did that before: Microsoft. And from a developer perspective they
did not a very impressive work.

Regards
	Joachim von Thadden
-- 
"Never touch a running system! Never run a touching system?
          Never run a touchy system!!!"