ros shell and filemanager in one program?

[Stead]

What if you put the stuff needed by both filemanager and shell into a dll? I'm not sure, but am I right: This will be loaded into memory only once, can even be used by other apps and does not crash if explorer crashes (?)

I think the point so far has been raised that it won't actually crash if the file manager and shell are one, and if anything it uses less resources if you wish to use the 2 together, and about concerns with security with the file manager and browsing the internet, i'm almost certain that just calls up the internet explorer dll's and any file manager could be used for that

also about using your own file manager, i see no good reason why reactos couldn't include an extra registry setting in the registry, ware the shell is default to explorer.exe, a file manager setting could be added, like filemanager = explorer.exe or your prefered, and the windows key and e would bring up whatever is said in the registry? does that make sence?

a little offtopic, but what would be nice if the startmenu and systray functions of the ros explorer could be made into seperate dll's, so people could use there own shell, and not have to worry about the menu's, if they just called a dll to use those things, i have tried making clones of the explorer startmenu in vb before (i found it interesting! ) but i never finished it as i could never get the systray to work properly, it would only ever show a few of the icons, and even then they never updated, also, they looked rarther naff, a sys tray vb control would be amazing!

[martinfuchs]

Yes, the shared code can be used from both processes if you move it into a DLL - but not the data. Moving it into a DLL also creates some overhead. And exporting C++ across a DLL boundary is something I would like to avoid, it can result in quite ugly problems.

Well, if you want really small executable sizes, just use professional compilers like VC++ oder Intel's compiler instead of GCC.
You get a binary of only about 50 to 70 % size.

You should also have a look at the "lean" version of ROS explorer. It contains only the basic functions, is smaller and also consumes quite a bit less memory than the standard version.

Btw: Why do you always talk about a crashing explorer?
I hope this is a very rare case - we are building reliable software on a reliable new operating system.

[oiaohm]

explorer.exe: 1,5 MB
rosshell.exe: 1,3 MB

Subtract about 800 kb just by making libstdc++ a dll.
700KB vers 500 Kb. Yep g++ is build on Unix where there is no need to clean up the libstdc++ because in most cases libstdc++ is a so(Unix DLL file)so mingw in most cases linked all of it into the exe.

Note VC++ and Intels both can reduce the std c++ runtime. But VC++ also will explot the .dll way also to reduce size.

Basicly the bigest section of common code is libstdc++. This will reduce the size of all the C++ code in reactos.

Question how much C++ does rosshell really need removing the runtime helps alot and pure C is better optimised by Gcc than C++ in g++. Explorer I can understand it might be just to complex to write in C.

Sorry to say that me crashing Explorer is about every 4 days when using windows (Windows XP lasts a little bit longer than the rest). Most common cause is running complier or 3d software using most of the resources while doing mult seaches for files. I can slow a windows system down to a crawl in about 5 mins due to memory geting mess up. Most people take 8 hours to criple windows this way as I do in 15min. I am hoping reactos will be stronger something like my linux worst case go off to lala land for a 1hour and come back with a few processes killed. Then having my 3d render stuff due to lack of ram creating a bad jpg or something then having explorer open a preview and crash(Yes I have preview turn off theses days).

This has got worse since using Linux and getting use to pushing system to limit and past.

[Stead]

before i disappear for a few days, this is for oiaohm

have you heard of a program called nlite?

if you are serious about 3d, and graphics and that lot, then maybe it could help, i found it very useful and i'll give u a real world example! yay!

a close female friend o mine loves to play the sims 2 (i notice thats a girl thing, all her flatmates love it too?) but on her laptop which wasn't by any means slow (P4, 2ghz, but only 256mb of ram) this game would take around 15 minutes to load, i made a custom nlite cd of windows xp, when windows started it used only 36mb of memory, and the sims 2 would launch in under a minute. it is by no means a performance enhancing program, well memory wise it could be, as it takes out quite a bit, it took down the memory usage from the default of around 120mb after xp installed (clean original cd) to 36mb with the nlited cd, thats a lot of extra memory i'd say!, would still go on the internet too, as at the time the version wasn't out that you could remove the internet stuff, not sure if it can now, i think its updated very often

another neat trick it can do, for security buff's, it can change the default administrator account name to whatever you want, could have your administrator account named 'reactos' if you wanted too !

[Quigs]

you click on "administrator" and go to rename...

[MadRat]

Yeah, if you are privy to the account. He means it can overwrite the existing one with no need for admin rights.

[oiaohm]

My machine is no toy. Anything less than 512 megs of ram is a toy from the point of view what I am dealing with.

I am running on half ram at the moment. Ie 512 megs of ram. A stick died it should have 1G. Free up 100 megs of ram is worth nothing to what I do still look at to see if I can get a little more power out of it.

Amd 64 3000+(this needs to be bigger want the double chip middle of this year) in linux running in 32 bit mode for the rendering at moment Ie 2 sticks are required so it that runs nicely in 64 bit mode with 64 bit memory addressing.

Basicly it memory management and protection problems in windows leading to other problems. Note you can push windows to hard it will not clean its memory up leading to problems.

This is real pressure test stuff it even can hurt linux boxs but not kill it. I am talking high pressure ram/swap thrash. If windows lives threw it. It has problems.

Running as administrator under high pressure how can you say fraged ntfs. Yep it will forget to write critical things to the filesystem.

Basicly I am after something that I cannot destroy no matter how bad I treat it.