A new coder

[CodeVisio]

Hi all,

I'm new here. I've just switched from the Italian section to this one.

I'm going to tell you a little about me just to give you a better context to answer my questions below: I'm a software engineer with many
years of development in windows environment, user mode, with C/C++, Win32, MFC, SourceSafe and so on.

I heard ReactOS needs some help in coding so here I am. Since I've lost my job a couple of months ago and I'm looking for a new one, I'm not sure I have now and in the future the time to give a contribution, but if I have the time to help then I'd like to have the dev env. set.

First of all, the communcation.
I've always used IM like msn/skype. I heard around about irc but I've never used it. I gave a look at mIRC but if I'm not wrong it's not free.
1) What is the difference between ircnet and an IM?
2) Which irc client do you usually use?(I need a free one)

Secondly, the code.
I've read all wiki doc. and I think I got the 'general design'. However, I prefer to start working on minor/simple bugs in order to take, over the time, the confidence with source code and code style. I gave a look at your BugZilla ( I've never used a bug tracker before ( just tons of papers ) ) and I've found it very unfriendly, probably it's just a matter of time to be confident with.
3) Are there minor/simple bugs on BugZilla I can start with? ( or some sort of section subdivisions ) Can you suggest me bugs I can start working on? If I don't wrong remember I've seen a list of bugs that need priority but I'm not sure I'm able to work on them.
4) ( this question is based upon your answer to item 3 ), I've seen from wiki I can create a .sln file. I think in this way I can load the entire ReactOS project inside the VS workspace and so I can use IntelliSense to easily move around the code ( right? ). My questions: can I use VS to compile the code? Will VS be helpful in debugging the code? Or Do I have to use the approach specified under Debugging section from the wiki?
5 ( this question is based upon your answer to item 3 too ), if I have to 'check-out' the entire ReactOS code, how much it will occupy on hard disk?
6 I'm going to use an emulator to run ReactOS because my hardware is very limited. Aftre I think I fixed a bug I need to test it before submitting a patch ( right? ), so my question: How do I have to proceed in this case?

I think it's ok for now, more questions will come after your answers.
About my English, let me know if there is something not clear.

Thanks

[CycleGeek]

1. IRC is designed for communicating with groups rather than one-to-one.
2. Miranda IM, ChatZilla (for Firefox), FreeNode's web client, to name a few.
3. There is the bug list in the Wiki to look at. If you have an interest in anything specific, you can look at the code for it and see if there is anything to be done there.

6. See Submitting Patches and the related subversion pages.

[EmuandCo]

At the beginning we only accept patches. After a few good ones you gain commit access. We have plenty of stuff to do. I suggest you to try reactos in a recent nightly and check for stuff not working or not bein implemented.

[FlyingIsFun1217]

Since I've lost my job a couple of months ago and I'm looking for a new one

Best of luck in finding a new one! Hope everything goes well in the mean time!

FlyingIsFun1217

[igorko]

Mainly we are using 3 emulators: VirtualBox, VMWare(Player) and Qemu. All should support ReactOS boot atm.

[Lone_Rifle]

FreeNode has a web-based client, http://webchat.freenode.net , from which you can log into FreeNode IRC and access the #reactos channel.

[CodeVisio]

Hi,

I'm writing my questions here (and not on irc) because I'm at the beginning and probably could be useful for someone else as new coder.

@CycleGeek and @Lone_Rifle
Thanks, MirandaIM worked fine. I successfully joined tha ReactOS channels 2/3 days ago.

@FlyingIsFun1217
I hope so...

@igorko
I chose the VirtualBox because ros wiki says so and because I've never used that stuff before. It has some bugs but now it seems working. Probaly I'm going to switch to QEMU in the future.


UPDATES:
I'm going to write some updates of my questions I've asked before in the case someone else will need them in the future:
4) I was able to create the solution for the entire ros tree source and load it on VS2008. IntelliSense seems to be working.
5) about ~500 MB
6) I guess ToirtoiseSVN will do the patch based on the modification of the souce tree.

a) I was able to download the entire reactos source tree to local via ToirtoiseSVN following the instruction from ros wiki.
b I was able to install the RosBE building environment and CMake. From that I successfully created the output folders for MingW and for VisualStudio and relative 'solution' files.
b1) Pay attention when you're going to create the the output folder and solution for Visual Studio because in a first try it fails to do that. You have to repeat a second time the command again, that is 'configure.cmd VSSolution'. Keep in mind that in order to this you have to run the 'configure.cmd VSSolution' in the Visual Studio Command Prompt window. For the MingW case you can run the command above into the RosBE command prompt windows.
b2) Visual Studio 2008 IntelliSense worked fine after loaded the ros solution.
c) I was able to install a ReactOS iso on the VirtualBox following the wiki suggestion and all works fine.
d) I played around ReactOS for a while and I've found a lot of bugs/missing features/difference with respect to Windows.


NEW QUESTIONS:
7) As ros wiki says the compilation from Visual Studio isn't supported yet: Is there anyone who successful compiled with the Microsoft C compiler or not? (obviously from VS I mean, not MSBuild).

8) What is the actual NT version of ReactOS compared with Windows? NT5(Win2000), XP?

9) I saw the ros buglist. After I decide which bug I want to fix, do I have to assign the bug from BugZillla to me? So we can avoid multiple people wokring on the same bug I thought.
9.1) Does the 'ros-bugs@reactos.org' item in the assigned field mean that the bug is unassigned?

10) Does The ToirtoiseSVN Check Out operation make an exclusive checkout from the SVN repository? Or Does it make simply a writable copy here in local? I guess (I hope) the second.

11) This is a question for a seasoned ros develepor.
What I've always done with Visual Studio is to set a breakpoint, run in debug mode, see the content of variables, and move step forward and so on.
11.1) What is best way to debug an app under ReactOS(user mode)?
11.2) And can I do the same as I usually do with Visual Studio?
11.3) Do I have to set/start ReactOS in a special manner?

12) I noticed that some apps coming with ros have a localization rc files. How do you create the content of those rc files? With Visual Studio? Or by hands?

Thanks

[Haos]

Hi,
NEW QUESTIONS:
7) As ros wiki says the compilation from Visual Studio isn't supported yet: Is there anyone who successful compiled with the Microsoft C compiler or not? (obviously from VS I mean, not MSBuild).

- http://build.reactos.org/builders/CMake ... %20Profile - MS VS11
- http://build.reactos.org/builders/CMake ... in%20Debug - MS WinDDK v7600

Both setup are capable of building a large portion of ROS, minus some C++ components that need certain non-standard gcc-based extensions.

8) What is the actual NT version of ReactOS compared with Windows? NT5(Win2000), XP?

NT 5.2 aka Windows 2003 SP2

9) I saw the ros buglist. After I decide which bug I want to fix, do I have to assign the bug from BugZillla to me? So we can avoid multiple people wokring on the same bug I thought.

I guess so. Doubt you will manage to collide with anyone on the same bug.

9.1) Does the 'ros-bugs@reactos.org' item in the assigned field mean that the bug is unassigned?

Assigned To: - Bug Zilla <ros-bugs@reactos.org> - means that bug is unnassigned.
Any other mail in this field means that the bug is assigned to the mail owner.

10) Does The ToirtoiseSVN Check Out operation make an exclusive checkout from the SVN repository? Or Does it make simply a writable copy here in local? I guess (I hope) the second.

I dont know what do you mean by exclusive checkout. This command will create a writable local copy of svn trunk of the given revision.

11) This is a question for a seasoned ros develepor.
What I've always done with Visual Studio is to set a breakpoint, run in debug mode, see the content of variables, and move step forward and so on.
11.1) What is best way to debug an app under ReactOS(user mode)?
11.2) And can I do the same as I usually do with Visual Studio?
11.3) Do I have to set/start ReactOS in a special manner?

There is a large section in our Wiki, named Debugging. This is quite a big area, and its hard to answer your questions in just a few sentences. It certainly depends on your coding style. Most of devs alter the code, compile the binaries or whole ISO and test their changes. It is possible to use WinDBG to debug ros, if you have it compiled on MS buildchain. It is also a good practice to write your code in proper Windows environment (be it VS or what you prefer) and make it work on ROS after its finished, but if this is one of the core components, such approach is simply not easy or even impossible.

As for starting ROS in a special manner, at boot you will be presented a list of modes to run ReactOS. We usually use the second one - ReactOS Debug, where it emits debug logs.

12) I noticed that some apps coming with ros have a localization rc files. How do you create the content of those rc files? With Visual Studio? Or by hands?

Thanks

By hand iirc, i`m not sure if VS-created rc files will work, one would need to make sure.

One more thing, please make sure your code can be built not only in MS buildchain, but also in our MinGW-based offical Build Environment, as it is neccessary for your patches to be accepted. When you`d like to submit code for our review and acceptance, please create a patch (unified diff from root of ROS trunk) and attach it to the bugreport you are fixing, or open a new bug if its something not reported yet.

I hope your questions were more/less answered, please feel free to ask anything in specific if you need more info.

[vicmarcal]

Hi CodeVisio!
Feel free to fix any of the Winetests:
http://reactos.org/testman/compare.php?ids=11139
As you can see there are some failing.
Click in the red background cell and a new window will show which test are failing and a link to them.
These tests check different APIs by sending them some params and comparing the returned result with the expected one.
This is a nice way to begin moving deeper into code

[Lone_Rifle]

Hi CodeVisio!
Feel free to fix any of the Winetests:
http://reactos.org/testman/compare.php?ids=11139
As you can see there are some failing.
Click in the red background cell and a new window will show which test are failing and a link to them.
These tests check different APIs by sending them some params and comparing the returned result with the expected one.
This is a nice way to begin moving deeper into code

Also note that some failures are marked as TODO by Wine, but ReactOS ignores the annotation. Always see if the patch/fix can be sent to Wine instead of being applied only on the ReactOS codebase. The exceptions to this would be NTDLL, USER32, KERNEL32, GDI32 and ADVAPI; Wine's implementation deviates from standard Win32 architecture, and so we have to implement our own.

[CodeVisio]

Hi,

a question on the fly:
the execution of ..\configure.cmd VSSolution worked almost fine as for MingW and WDDK. I ran it under VS2008 Command Prompt Window.
I said 'almost' because before it terminated its execution it shown something like the following:

Missing variable is:
CMAKE_IMPLIB_COMPILE_OBJECT
CMake Error: Error required internal CMake variable not set, cmake may not be nuilt correctly.

It seems to me an error.
I couldn't find any place where the variable CMAKE_IMPLIB_COMPILE_OBJECT should be set, I din't find any files, doc., discussion on the web or on the cmake website or on ReactOS forums.

Any suggestion? Is it a variable yo uset somewhere insize the React configuration files?

Thanks

[Lone_Rifle]

You might find the following useful:
http://www.reactos.org/wiki/Building_ReactOS
http://www.reactos.org/wiki/CMake

[CodeVisio]

Hi Lone_Rifle,

Are you pointing me to a particular place in those wiki pages? Or are you talking about the entire wiki pages in general?

I've already read those pages, but I couldn't find any information about the string CMAKE_IMPLIB_COMPILE_OBJECT.

Thanks

[vicmarcal]

Hi,

a question on the fly:
the execution of ..\configure.cmd VSSolution worked almost fine as for MingW and WDDK. I ran it under VS2008 Command Prompt Window.
I said 'almost' because before it terminated its execution it shown something like the following:

Thanks

Iirc, the configure.cmd has to be run from the ReactOS Build Environment (RosBE) command prompt window.

[encoded]

i get that error too on occasion, ignoring it sometimes works, making clean (or deleting output folder and running configure) might help too. Note that building reactos from Visual Studio solution doesn't really work due to various problems, with nmake, however, it works great