What are these terms?

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PurpleGurl
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What are these terms?

Post by PurpleGurl »

I like following the trunk logs and watching what is being done. However, I don't know all the terminology nor the significance of various components. So I will ask here.
  • What is AFD?
  • What are asserts?
  • What is CMake and how is it better than the previous solution used?
  • What are cruft files?
  • What is the significance of going from GCC to MSVC?
  • What is lwIP?
  • What is NDK?
  • What does NTDLL and LDR do?
  • What do NPFS do?
  • What is RTL?
gabrielilardi
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Re: What are these terms?

Post by gabrielilardi »

What is AFD?
This is a driver, Ancillary Function Driver for WinSock, part of the Windows TCP/IP stack.
What are asserts?
These are sanity checks, they function this way: At a certain point of time in a particular code path a condition must be true, if it is not, execution is halted telling that what you thought was supposed to happen, did not.
What is CMake and how is it better than the previous solution used?
From their site: "cross-platform, open-source build system". See the newsletter 77 for more info.
What are cruft files?
"Cruft is jargon for computer software or hardware that is of poor quality. The term originates from source code that is rewritten leaving irrelevant or unwanted data within the code", from Wikipedia.
What is the significance of going from GCC to MSVC?
Both are compilers, gcc is included with RosBE, MSVC is included with Visual Studio. I'm not entitled to tell you more about this...
What is lwIP?
"lwIP is a light-weight implementation of the TCP/IP protocol suite", from their site. There's a gsoc proposal to replace our OSKit-based TCP implementation with a lwIP-based one.
What is NDK?
Take a look here.
What does NTDLL and LDR do?
NT layer DLL, LDR is the loader part of the DLL. Take a look at wikipedia to clear this up.
What do NPFS do?
Named Pipe File System, it's the way processes communicate between each other, take a look here.
zefklop
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Re: What are these terms?

Post by zefklop »

PurpleGurl wrote:What is RTL?
Run Time Library, a bunch of function which, aside of the CRT (C Runtime Library), permits to do most basic stuff you need. For instance, initializing an unicode string, or converting a dos PATH to an NT-style path, etc...
gabrielilardi
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Re: What are these terms?

Post by gabrielilardi »

zefklop wrote:Run Time Library
Eh, somehow I lost the last part :)
Haos
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Re: What are these terms?

Post by Haos »

What is the significance of going from GCC to MSVC?
We are not transitioning from one to another, rather supporting both. Why bother supporting MSVC? Being able to use MS buildchain tools, pdb's and debugging?
PurpleGurl
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Re: What are these terms?

Post by PurpleGurl »

gabrielilardi wrote:
What is CMake and how is it better than the previous solution used?
From their site: "cross-platform, open-source build system". See the newsletter 77 for more info.
That still doesn't clear things up much for me. That doesn't really tell what it does or why it is important to switch to it over Rbuild. I guess Cmake is just a better implementation with less dependency problems.
What are cruft files?
"Cruft is jargon for computer software or hardware that is of poor quality. The term originates from source code that is rewritten leaving irrelevant or unwanted data within the code", from Wikipedia.
The more original definition seems to fit what I've seen. Apparently, they were cleaning up from a rewrite, thus the removal of files and functions.
What is the significance of going from GCC to MSVC?
Both are compilers, gcc is included with RosBE, MSVC is included with Visual Studio. I'm not entitled to tell you more about this...
I was just curious. No need to get defensive. I do appreciate the later answer about desiring more flexibility.
What is NDK?
Take a look here.
So this tied in with my question about NTDLL and LDR.
What does NTDLL and LDR do?
NT layer DLL, LDR is the loader part of the DLL. Take a look at wikipedia to clear this up.
What do NPFS do?
Named Pipe File System, it's the way processes communicate between each other, take a look here.
Those are both still gobbledygook to me, but I have a still clearer understanding.

Thank you so much for your time, and it helps.
zefklop
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Re: What are these terms?

Post by zefklop »

I guess we should have some list of common used terms somewhere in the wiki. We could start one based on this thread, and update it regularly. Furthermore, this would be easy to maintain, as terms do not change so often :-)
DonDunsmore
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Re: What are these terms?

Post by DonDunsmore »

This project has been going on for over a decade, and outside of kicks n' giggles, why are you still trying to proceed? Seriously, I agree with open source and would like a good alternative to Microsoft. Plus I think there could be some unexpected (and not necessarily Microsoft desired) directions taken. But NT? Is there really that many users still using NT?
Haos
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Re: What are these terms?

Post by Haos »

DonDunsmore wrote:This project has been going on for over a decade, and outside of kicks n' giggles, why are you still trying to proceed? Seriously, I agree with open source and would like a good alternative to Microsoft. Plus I think there could be some unexpected (and not necessarily Microsoft desired) directions taken. But NT? Is there really that many users still using NT?
Yes. 9x% of the PC's have NT OS installed. Please note that you should not mix up the term for whole range of operating systems (NT) with the particular version of it (NT3/NT4). Our current target is NT 5.2, Windows 2003.
CycleGeek
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Re: What are these terms?

Post by CycleGeek »

zefklop wrote:I guess we should have some list of common used terms somewhere in the wiki.
http://www.reactos.org/wiki/Abbreviations
PurpleGurl
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Re: What are these terms?

Post by PurpleGurl »

DonDunsmore wrote:This project has been going on for over a decade, and outside of kicks n' giggles, why are you still trying to proceed? Seriously, I agree with open source and would like a good alternative to Microsoft. Plus I think there could be some unexpected (and not necessarily Microsoft desired) directions taken. But NT? Is there really that many users still using NT?
All Windows OS's since Windows 2000 (and including 2000) are NT-based, including XP, 2003, Vista, Seven, and Eight. However, this is off-topic for the thread.

I agree with the others that we need a permanent list. Yes, the abbreviations list is a good start, and I just edited it to add more, but we could use a basic glossary too.
Haos
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Re: What are these terms?

Post by Haos »

Same as NT 3.1, 3.5, 3.51 and NT4
PurpleGurl
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Re: What are these terms?

Post by PurpleGurl »

Haos wrote:Same as NT 3.1, 3.5, 3.51 and NT4
Obviously, and I agree. I was trying to make the point to him that all from 2k onward are *also* NT. He apparently assumed that NT only included what you mentioned. I admit I didn't see your earlier reply which was much better, and that I left out the word "also" in mine. I was careful to say it as I did to exclude the 9x/ME kernel, which was produced around roughly the same time as the original NT stuff, but came up through the DOS + Win 3.1x line. The 9x stuff was to be personal, while NT was to be professional. Then with 2000, the 2 markets began to merge. It used a modified 9x desktop/interface with the NT kernel if I remember right. Then XP completed the transition to a single interface for both markets. I love how 2000 felt more robust than 98 on the same hardware, how it crashed much less, and how it was more responsive the few times it crashed.

So while there was a separate 9x and NT line, it all became NT as of Windows 2000, and every version since then built upon that.

---

What are COW files?
Last edited by PurpleGurl on Sun Oct 09, 2016 6:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.
hto
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Post by hto »

Copy-on-write
Sof_T
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Re: What are these terms?

Post by Sof_T »

PurpleGurl wrote: What are COW files?
Glad you asked I was wondering the same thing(, typical man I kept quiet :D)
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