Release testing for 0.3.16

[Z98]

So it's been a while since the last release, but a couple of things have come through that are setting us up for the big 0.4.0. Before we get there however, we'd like to get some more extensive feedback in the form of 0.3.16 to iron out some rough edges. Specifically, Giannis' work on both themes and the shell libraries have made significant advancements and we would like to see how usable they are in general. The explorer_new shell has actually been bundled for quite some time in the nightly builds but we never really advertised that. Well now we are. It is not yet enabled by default, so running it will require killing the old explorer and starting explorer_new. Feedback on how it feels will help determine just how close we are to 0.4.0 so bang on it as hard as you can.

In addition to that, the USB stack in ReactOS has also reached a point where it needs to be stressed to help flush out bugs and issues in both the stack and things like the PnP and IO managers. Doing this has been very tricky in the past since traditionally users have had to get debug output from a physical computer to test USB. With USB passthrough in virtual machines however, it is now possible to test a wide variety of USB drives and get debug output without having to futz with serial connections on physical systems. The conditions that will be important to test are having USBs plugged in when booting, plugged in after booting, plugged in at shutdown but pulled before the next boot, and so on. To properly stress the system, it is important to have ReactOS deal with a variety of daily use cases.

The following links are where test results can be gathered:

http://www.reactos.org/wiki/Tests_for_0.3.16

http://www.reactos.org/wiki/USB_Testing

Current release canddiate: http://sourceforge.net/projects/reactos ... p/download

Please use that revision for the application testing. The USB testing can use either that one or the latest, either would be a useful metric. Finally, do NOT add new programs to the tests list without my permission.

[Bblaauw]

https://www.reactos.org/wiki/LiveUSB might be worthwile as an easy method for testing this revision on real hardware.
Note the listed issues though (see RUFUS threads in this subforum).

[Webunny]

So it's been a while since the last release, but a couple of things have come through that are setting us up for the big 0.4.0. Before we get there however, we'd like to get some more extensive feedback in the form of 0.3.16 to iron out some rough edges. Specifically, Giannis' work on both themes and the shell libraries have made significant advancements and we would like to see how usable they are in general. The explorer_new shell has actually been bundled for quite some time in the nightly builds but we never really advertised that. Well now we are. It is not yet enabled by default, so running it will require killing the old explorer and starting explorer_new. Feedback on how it feels will help determine just how close we are to 0.4.0 so bang on it as hard as you can.

In addition to that, the USB stack in ReactOS has also reached a point where it needs to be stressed to help flush out bugs and issues in both the stack and things like the PnP and IO managers. Doing this has been very tricky in the past since traditionally users have had to get debug output from a physical computer to test USB. With USB passthrough in virtual machines however, it is now possible to test a wide variety of USB drives and get debug output without having to futz with serial connections on physical systems. The conditions that will be important to test are having USBs plugged in when booting, plugged in after booting, plugged in at shutdown but pulled before the next boot, and so on. To properly stress the system, it is important to have ReactOS deal with a variety of daily use cases.

The following links are where test results can be gathered:

http://www.reactos.org/wiki/Tests_for_0.3.16

http://www.reactos.org/wiki/USB_Testing

And the current revision that I will likely branch off from: http://iso.reactos.org/bootcd/bootcd-61659-dbg.7z

Please use that revision for the application testing. The USB testing can use either that one or the latest, either would be a useful metric. Finally, do NOT add new programs to the tests list without my permission.

Is it meant to have already comments on there, even without anything green/red (works or not)?

Also, while it says 0.3.16 as title, right under that it says: "Preliminary ReactOS 0.3.15 tests page. RC ISO: http://iso.reactos.org/bootcd/bootcd-61659-dbg.7z"

I guess that should be changed into 0.3.16? I would do it myself, but it seems you're pretty touchy about anyone actually changing something that's not directly 'allowed' test-results, so I'll just point it out.

[MadWolf]

hi
AC97 Driver for VirtualBox is working

[Z98]

Consequences of the copy and paste. I didn't quite clean out all of the old notes.

[eersoy93]

http://www.reactos.org/wiki/Tests_for_0.3.15

I tested many applications with 0.3.15's release version and I sent to the page them. Is it relevant?

[Webunny]

There seems to be very little activity for/in testing the 0.3.16 RC, so I decided to give the good example and test some applications that were mentioned there. I hope others will follow suit soon...

[hbelusca]

[...]And the current revision that I will likely branch off from: http://iso.reactos.org/bootcd/bootcd-61659-dbg.7z[...]

Notice, Ziliang, that just right after r61659 there are interesting fixes in ACPI and in some security token thingie in ntoskrnl, by Timo. Maybe ask him to know whether those fixes may be needed to be branched too.

[Webunny]

[...]And the current revision that I will likely branch off from: http://iso.reactos.org/bootcd/bootcd-61659-dbg.7z[...]

Notice, Ziliang, that just right after r61659 there are interesting fixes in ACPI and in some security token thingie in ntoskrnl, by Timo. Maybe ask him to know whether those fixes may be needed to be branched too.

Such as?

[mametoc]

post to delete, sorry.

[cruonit]

I retested code::blocks it's now fully functional under reactos !!!
- the first time i tested it didn't compile the source code and the icons where black and wrong
- the second problem was it didn't open the console windows after compiling
- After that the console was in front of code::blocs (TOP-MOST)
- last problem and the worst one was that code::blocks didn't detect the mingw compiler when it runs after the restart - its solved now ! this problem was in <=0.3.15

the errors where solved in the last 1-2 years, i think the registry rewrite or the disk driver solved the last one.
There is still one problem sometimes only when the user restarts reactos code:::blocs loses it's configuration but it takes a few secs. to reconfigure it i wil check where it keeps the configuration.

also there is a little blue overlay on the tabs but i think thats a wine problem
http://pokit.org/get/?eb0dcee7c3e579f34 ... 57aabb.jpg

So there are still two little glitches but i think it's almost gold status

[Black_Fox]

http://www.reactos.org/wiki/Tests_for_0.3.16

This makes me happy. I doubled my pledge for Thorium on Kickstarter.

There seems to be very little activity for/in testing the 0.3.16 RC, so I decided to give the good example and test some applications that were mentioned there. I hope others will follow suit soon...

I tested some more apps.

To all testers: please make this activity meaningful! If you add a comment to some of the apps, be sure to also fill in the works/fails status for as much as possible. Use templates.
Don't just slap random note without filling out the important fields (see Opera 12.16 or ReactOS Build Environment 2.1). Check that your linked JIRA issues are still relevant (see the previous comment of IrfanView 4.37 - two long-closed JIRA issues linked).

[DOSGuy]

The explorer_new shell has actually been bundled for quite some time in the nightly builds but we never really advertised that. Well now we are. It is not yet enabled by default, so running it will require killing the old explorer and starting explorer_new. Feedback on how it feels will help determine just how close we are to 0.4.0 so bang on it as hard as you can.

I've tried r61659 (as linked) in VirtualBox 4.3.6 and Bochs 2.6.2. When I kill explorer and start explorer_new, the Start button does nothing when I click on it. No programs show up in the the task bar, and the task bar can be resized larger, but not smaller. When I go to My Computer, I can change folders, but the path bar is blank. The title bar doesn't update unless I click somewhere in the menu bar area. None of the menus work. In general, explorer_new does little else than load without crashing. Am I doing it wrong or were you expecting this? Suffice it to say that it's not ready to replace explorer yet.

[cruonit]

had the same problem as DosBox

[Webunny]

Also - but this is not specific to the 0.3.16 build, since earlier builds had it as well: while installing and running ROS goes VERY fast, the responsiveness thereafter - especially when clicking on the icons/programs and opening windows, leaves anything to be desired. It goes very slowly; several seconds can pas before a window opens, it first shows some sort of 'blue' rectangle (probably the background that comes through when opening an overlapping window), and everything just acts like... my El Cheapo tabled for 60 bucks I bought on the Chinese market: it feels sluggish and you have to be patient when opening anything.

Also, when you move/delete/place something on your desktop, it doesn't show up (visually). I first thought it just didn't work, but then I had to restart because of a hang, and after the restart, all that I put there on the desktop *was* visible.


But well, I think those issues are already know, just wanted to mention they're still there.

As said before, it installs/runs on my HW again, and things look pretty good for an alpha release. I will test the usb-stuff a bit more out tomorrow.