[ros-dev] Restructuring ReactOS

[Maya Posch]

Well, those 'hacks' you added I would classify as 'supports', i.e. 
temporary constructs which allow you to continue writing code and which 
you'll properly fill in later on.

What I would call a real hack is something which is like a shortcut, a 
quick and dirty way to accomplish something without the intent of fixing 
it ASAP. We have all known the temptation of doing something quickly 
because it would be easy to do so, instead of doing it right and taking 
significantly longer. One leads to quality code, the other doesn't.


Maya


Timo Kreuzer wrote:
> Maya Posch schrieb:
>>  A hack means that someone 
>>   can't or doesn't know how to do something elegantly/the right way, 
>> whether it's due to ignorance or lack of interest. 
> I have to disagree.
> While working on amd64 branch I added a shitload of hacks. To later
> remove them again.
> Why?
> Because to get things going initially, it's often reasonable to
> introduce a hack somewhere.
> 
> Another thing is that we are all working on different parts of the OS,
> all having different abilities and knowlege.
> Someone might work on module A, that requires some functionality from
> module B that isn't implemented.
> Example: MmSecureVirtualMemory. It's needed in win32k at several places.
> It's unimplemented.
> I currently don't have the knowledge to implement it. Most of us
> probably don't. I added HackSecureVirtualMemory to
> win32k, that should work in a similar way and can be used as a
> replacement (jimtabor said it's broken though, but it's an example)
> We could also wait until it's properly implemented in the kernel but
> that might take a while and might slow down further development in win32k.
> 
> What I agree on, is that adding hacks to usermode apps to make them work
> on ros is definitely wrong.
> And hacks should be marked as hacks and not used as a base for futher
> code design (the hacks-on-top-of-hacks-design)
> 
> Timo
> 
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