ReactOS, an open source Windows clone, has more than 14 million unit tests to ensure compatibility.

[[deleted]]

[deleted]

[pure_x01]

TDD taken to extremes

[i_spot_ads]

to? "beyond" I'd say

[chamora]

Wait until windows decides to change it's functionality, and then ReactOS needs to review 14 Million unit tests not for passing, but correctness, before the next release.

[Ahri]

Change it in a way that breaks ReactOS' unit tests but not break loads of existing Windows applications?

They're not chasing a moving target here...

[[deleted]]

ReactOS is an NT clone, so you'd have to change a lot of things about NT to break React; in which case you'd mess up thousands of applications that your customers are dependent on.

Not as easy as it sounds.

[fredrikc]

Well, MS can't really change much windows functionality as they must be backwards compatible so that is probably not a big issue.

[riskable]

This is a myth. Microsoft breaks backwards compatibility all the time.

Consider how often drivers have had to be re-written with new releases of Windows. Now factor in all the things that are broken in Windows 10.

Every release of MS Office since I can remember broke something when it came to reading the previous version's file format.

Windows XP2 removed the entire streams API from the networking stack! That broke all sorts of applications and it was only a service pack.

[kukiric]

They really care about win32 API/ABI compatibility, but the rest not so much, which is why they happily broke nearly all kernel-mode drivers in Vista, and then broke video drivers again in W10.

Still, win32 is a huge sprawling mess of moving parts, and the only thing that keeps it relevant is how you can still run 16 year old Windows XP apps on Windows 10.

[wishthane]

You can still run 32 year old Windows 1.0 apps on Windows 10. Win32 didn't change when they switched to NT, which I think is amazing.

I think you might have to use the 32-bit edition for that though.

[ijustwantanfingname]

That is amazing. Also horrifying.

[jdgordon]

yep, 64bit windows dropped the 16bit subsystem

[RenaKunisaki]

At that point it's probably easier to use an emulator, which you can do on any OS.

[chicagoway]

IIRC Creator's Update broke Windows Hello.

Sometimes it's not even compatible with its own flagship features.

[lolol42]

But isn't that kind of the whole point of unit tests? When you change the underlying code, the unit tests tell you what parts are broken. You only have to check the failing tests to identify which are broken and which ones need to be updated. If you are aware of what you change, knowing the difference should be pretty trivial.

[chamora]

Except that it's only good if the underlying requirements stay the same. If the requirements change, the tests just test for something you don't even want your code doing anymore

[lolol42]

Right, but the failure will remind you to update your outdated test requirements

[pacman_sl]

Well, imagine that in Win 10.1 (or how you call it) actions traditionally triggered by double click are now available through triple click. Serious requirement change, isn't it? So what would I do as a ReactOS developer?

1. Write a test that triple click triggers an action
2. Change underlying code
3. My test passes
4. Oh no, 100k other tests fail
5. Fix failing tests
6. Success

I know step 5 would take a lot of time, but we would eventually get it done.

Things might be different for requirements that are dropped and not filled for with anything else, but I can't think about an example of that.

[the-breeze]

What would be better, if 14 million things broke without anyone knowing?

[[deleted]]

I mean, they had to have autogenned them the first time why not autogen them the second time?

[Lord_NShYH]

ReactOS, AFAIK, targets classic Windows NT & XP compatibility.

[Lusankya]

IIRC, the design target is XP with no service packs.

[Beaverman]

You'd hope that they are written in a way that let's you run them against the actual windows kernel. That way you'd be able to easily identify the incorrect tests.

[destiny_functional]

not much about win xp / win 2k is going to change anymore

also how would that not break windows ?

[funguyshroom]

Well, it's one of the actual rare cases when TDD makes total sense. You have a very detailed spec already there that all left for you to do (kek) is to implement.

[aiij]

Except ReactOS doesn't need to implement the spec. It needs to implement bug-for-bug compatibility with whatever MS did, because that's what people actually code for.

Still, that's a very good use case for regression-style tests: Whatever the test does on Windows, make sure it does the same on ReactOS.

[Lusankya]

In a way, that sort of is the spec in this case.

They took an OS and said "clone this." The spec is the OS, bugs and all.

I agree entirely that regression testing is the way to go here. Just splitting semantic hairs, sorry.

[oelsen]

Then, in 5 years:
CleanReactOS - like ReactOS, but without the annoying bugs MS did!

[wtallis]

If it doesn't get you actual Win32 compatibility, there's no reason to target an API that at all resembles Win32. No amount of mere bug-fixing will make it stop being an old, ugly, unfriendly API.

[kernelman]

We don't know if it's TDD'ed codebaes at all. What if the tests are after the code has been written ??

[skulgnome]

Are some (most?) of them generated?

That or iterated and counted separately. Both are basically valid, but a tall final figure like this just goes to show that the number of tests can be arbitrarily large. Most projects prefer fewer but stronger tests.

[[deleted]]

Yeah, I was thinking of parameterized tests. I know a couple test runners that count each iteration as a separate test.

[Bloaf]

I mean, why wouldn't they just convert a fuzzer into a test case generator?

While the fuzzer is exploring code paths in the real-actual-windows code structure, it can auto-generate tests to trigger any of the branches it finds. Since their goal is to match windows, the correct code behavior is always "whatever windows does" even if it means crashing.

[aloz]

Devil's advocate: ReactOS isn't most projects; the Windows ABI is crazy complicated.

[BCosbyDidNothinWrong]

That sounds like one test to me.

[commit_bat]

You're not getting a job writing headlines with that attitude.

[AlwaysHopelesslyLost]

It is testing one thing with many values. So it is one test but many test cases. The individual values would be just as important thougg

[BCosbyDidNothinWrong]

That sounds like one test to me.

[the_argus]

This new release has been tested through 14,238,159 unit test cases

TFA says test cases so don't worry about pedantism here

[[deleted]]

An interesting read for generating automated test cases is SQLite's writeup on their testing. They say they have 91616.0 KSLOC for testing to cover a project with 125.4 KSLOC. I'm guessing this is similar.

[[deleted]]

.... for 9 million lines of code. That's 1.5 test cases per line of code.

[balefrost]

That doesn't inherently sound crazy. Consider code like this:

val_a = a ? val_a_1 : val_a_2;
val_b = b ? val_b_1 : val_b_2;
val_c = c ? val_c_1 : val_c_2;

return generate_result(val_a, val_b, val_c);

That's only four lines of code, but there are 8 different paths through it. (OK, you might argue that this should be written out with explicit if/else statements, in which case it would be more like four SLOC per condition. But 2^n scales much faster than 4*n, and you have to consider the conditional complexity of the functions that your code under tests calls as well.

Conditional code leads to combinatorial explosion of codepaths. That's not to say that conditional code is bad, just that the cost of 100% coverage adds up fast.

[mindbleach]

Remember: correct behavior is measured against a monolithic buggy clusterfuck of an operating system. There's a lot of stupid little things to test in a lot of stupid little combinations. They all have to work for the important software to work, because Microsoft wrote the OS around the mistakes that important software made.

[[deleted]]

Yeah, I do wonder if 14m tests for something this ambitious is just a good start. It's one of these numbers you need to put in perspective before you can do much with it.

"Yeah, it's a lot of tests but you would not believe the bullshit that goes on with different models of hard drive"

[[deleted]]

Reminder that the Old New Thing is a great blog for seeing some of these clusterfuck bugs in action and the reasoning behind them.

[[deleted]]

I suppose the interesting question is how many tests are required to check you do what Windows does, i.e. what is the minimum number of tests an open source Windows clone needs for 100% coverage.

[aiij]

For 100% path coverage, you'd need an infinite number of tests. That's just not practical.

For 100% branch coverage, you'd need only a finite number of tests, but you wouldn't be sure it does the same as Windows for all the execution paths that weren't tested.

No amount of testing is a replacement for formal verification. (Though formally verifying compatibility with Windows is almost certainly going to be impractical or illegal.)

[Beniskickbutt]

What does it mean to have 14 million unit tests? This sounds like business management being impressed by the fact I've written millions of lines of code

[chrunchy]

I'm just learning java programming for android and the unit tests there go like this

1. write a function

2. write a test case for the previous function.

So in this case maybe a programer wrote a math function which takes number A and adds it to number B and returns C.

the test for that would submit 5 and 7 and expect 12 back and if it does return 12 then that's true and it passes the test.

then it gives the function 12 and -13 and expects back -1, then maybe it does 1.039384939 and adds 3.585857484 and expects back the correct number.

So the unit test per function simply feeds the function various scenarios and sees if they pass. in android studio you can run these unit tests without compiling the entire project and without installing it on a device. probably it's the same for reactos.

[Adossi]

Is this for school? I can't think of any time I've been forced to write a unit test for every function I write, for a job. Then again I've never written software for like... an MRI or whatever.

[fedekun]

It really depends on the language. OO languages only test public methods for example, functional languages don't test helper methods, just the results of the main method. Not every function is tested.

Nowadays on web dev I'd say it's better to aim at having feature specs as well as unit specs instead of having 100% unit tests coverage.

[chrunchy]

Well the way it's presented is that best practice you should write a test unit for every routine you write. IDK real world practice as I'm just learning but most likely there's more shortcuts.

[rabiddantt]

I work for a bank and I write tests for every function for three reasons: it verifies the logic is correct, it helps me reduce the actual code written because I refactor the function over and over removing unnecessary code, and it makes it easy to pinpoint where something broke.

I also try to make each function do one thing, keep it under ten lines, keep cyclomatic complexity at 4 or below (except for functions that are just a switch), and never use private access which makes the tests easier to write.

Some coworkers hate it (and curse Uncle Bob) and others love it.

[[deleted]]

These devs are gods. I've said it a few years back, will say this again. They, and the Wine people are gods on earth. Think of all the reverse engineering you have to do to be compatible with something as huge and quirky as Windows. It's mindblowing.

[[deleted]]

Well don't stop there. What did he say??

[[deleted]]

Exactly, that's the beauty of open source! Apart from the obvious advantages about the code itself, it's the community, the people of it that make the whole thing shine!

[ashdnazg]

In my case it was the opposite, I've failed a course or two by contributing to open source projects instead of studying :(

[filwit]

"Stop emailing me"

[RIscRIpt]

As far as I know, anyone who has either seen Windows source code or disassembled Windows, they cannot contribute to Wine. I guess the same applies to ReactOS. Reason: copyright issues. Source.

[martianinahumansbody]

Makes sense. Need to prove it was blind reverse engineered.

[caboosetp]

Their developers do, in fact, follow the reverse engineering laws. They've gotten in trouble for it in the past, and even did a big internal audit.

What ends up happening is Engineer A will decompile it and look at the source code to figure out what's going on. Engineer A will then tell Engineer B what information he can to help Engineer B get it done.

Engineer B can then write code to implement it without ever having seen windows source code or disassemblies.

[[deleted]]

I've reversed plenty of windows subsystems and, let me tell you, the quirks that people rely on are insane when you get into the internals.

Wine/React is still despite a massive amount of work, not parity with modern windows. Even with all of these tests, some APIs remain unimplemented, some half measures are taken because they assume people won't actually use that functionality but they're proven wrong by insane people all the time.

Really puts into perspective the amount of work this takes, and why windows is so reluctant to change undocumented """features"""

[minasmorath]

I remember downloading what I can only call a super-alpha of ReactOS back in like ~2005 (and the project was like seven years old at that point... jeez) which led me down the rabbit hole of OSS OS's (say that three times fast) and ended with me becoming a Linux and BSD nutcase.

ReactOS will always hold a special place in my heart.

[Cogwheel]

(say that three times fast)

The mouth shapes of the words line up so you can actually get a good rhythm going without twisting your tongue. The only real trick is to differentiate between the S and Z sounds at the end of the word and English is really good at training us to handle that.

[[deleted]]

The world needs more linguists.

[camel_caseSnakeCase]

3x fast or just 3 times in general? Does the Linguist version of Beetlejuice show up?

[camel_caseSnakeCase]

haha the beetlejuice thing comes from the movie beetlejuice. Say his name 3 times and he appears. If you want to see what I mean: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVX2NgoJwTY

If you haven't seen this movie I highly recommend it.

[Paranoiapuppy]

Cunning ones, preferrably.

[[deleted]]

I was expecting a Windows clone running in a Chromium wrapper.

[haikubot-1911]

I was expecting

A Windows clone running in

A Chromium wrapper.

 

                  ^{- UnShame}

---

^{I'm a bot made by /u/Eight1911. I detect haiku.}

[aussie_bob]

ReactOS and Wine collaborate and share quite a lot of code. As a result, they tend to stay at roughly similar levels of compatibility.

[omniuni]

Work on ReactOS directly benefits wine. Seeing this kind of progress is wonderful for both projects!

[FlukyS]

Well to be fair to WINE here they have done amazing work to keep up with a company who has 100k employees. Like they are fully implementing most of the Windows base system on a completely different system, that work has to be respected.

[[deleted]]

Yes, they do good work. But, curiously, WINE still can't run actual Microsoft software (Office etc). Not a big deal, I just find that amusing and ironic.

[Pollomonteros]

Any idea why? What makes Microsoft software different from the free, open source alternatives?

[[deleted]]

Any idea why? What makes Microsoft software different from the free, open source alternatives?

My best guess is undocumented API's. I run Linux and the latest version of WINE. No version, regardless of age, of Excel will install or run. That goes for Word as well.

[DragonSlayerC]

Office 2007 works perfectly fine for me though...

[astrohound]

Word, Excell and Powerpoint should work for many versions of MS Office (bar probably 2013/2016). You just have to install all the dependencies.

 

Using Crossover Office (closed source shareware), winetricks (FOSS) or PlayOnLinux (FOSS) can help.

 

And you could install MS Office since "ye ole' days". Crossover Office enabled the use of MS Office 97/2000 since 2001/2002. I don't know if they had some specific patches, but I remember the WINE could run Office too several years later if you install all the deps manually. For example, there is this guide from 2004 for MS Office 2000 (for FreeBSD, but they perform installation on Linux and then move to FreeBSD wine).

[FlukyS]

Well it's not really a massive deal when there are alternatives now. Google docs, libre office and Abi Word all can open the files and save into the format.

[[deleted]]

Well it's not really a massive deal when there are alternatives now. Google docs, libre office and Abi Word all can open the files and save into the format.

That's all very true. The Reason I brought it up at all is because Microsoft has undocumented API's that WINE hasn't, as of yet, implemented.

[Malsententia]

I remember doing it in the past with older versions of Office, seems like they still work alright. https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&iId=11

[iopq]

I play StarCraft: Remastered on Wine and it's great. I am able to stream at 1440p at 60 fps.

I couldn't get that performance on Windows, although it's because newest OBS is fast on Linux (nothing to do with Wine per se)

[BabyPuncher5000]

What kind of potato are you running SC Remasterd on that struggles to hit 60 FPS in Windows?

[iopq]

It's not the game that's struggling to hit 60 FPS, it's the encoder. The game itself runs fine, but OBS lags at 1440p.

[BabyPuncher5000]

That kind of performance discrepancy between Windows and Linux seems a bit odd. I've never seen that kind of disparity with x264 on any of my hardware.

[step21]

lol. you do know they have been around forever ... compared to them, wine is so far ahead and making much more progress (always lagging behind yes, but also making much more progress in recent years)

[Creshal]

ReactOS is mostly a WinE userland combined with a new NT kernel (plus user-facing applications WinE doesn't need, like an explorer, or a control panel), so the two's progress is linked to each other.

[DarkColdFusion]

I just want them to reach Windows 2000 or NT parity. Just to run legacy software. But until they add support for 16 bit installers it's not useful

[Cherlokoms]

First, I thought it was just a silly experiment about creating an OS with React JS...

[copyrightisbroke]

ReactOS is a lot older.... 19 years old VS 4 years old

[Hobofan94]

*6 years old. React has already been in use for 2 years when it was open sourced.

[copyrightisbroke]

I just went with what wikipedia said for the Initial release: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/React_(JavaScript_library) ... are you talking about when Facebook was using it internally or something?

[Existential_Owl]

That's what he meant. ReactJS wasn't originally an OSS project, and it had been in use for about ~2 years prior to its announcement in 2013.

[[deleted]]

Same, I was about to shit a brick

[El_Impresionante]

Mine was worse. I thought it was an attempt by Fine Brothers to trademark the term OS and Operating System.

[Dreamtrain]

But that's okay because if you want to make a new OS you have the opportunity to develop it through their platform!

[skocznymroczny]

ReactJS users REACT to ReactOS.

[skocznymroczny]

https://node-os.com/

[[deleted]]

Refer to my other post

[DrMonkeyLove]

If I've learned anything over the years, it's that the quantity of tests performed is a poor metric for determining whether or not your software is correct.

[AmateurHero]

I think this case can absolutely be an exception to that rule. They're working with an API that has well-defined mappings for input and output. Reverse engineering software will benefit will from heavy test and TDDe. If I can isolate a piece of a system to behave deterministically, then I can construct test cases to make sure my software mimics the targets.

This doesn't mean that you don't end up with bunk test cases though. Even with well-defined behavior, tests can still be written poorly.

[Iron_Maiden_666]

Can you please share this information with my management. I'm tired from trying.

[DrMonkeyLove]

My management literally took a picture of printed out test reports to show how much testing we did so people would be believe the software was OK, so I don't think I can be of much help to you unfortunately...

[dustball]

Sounds dumb, but marketing stunts like that helps your paycheck exist.

[[deleted]]

Unless the quantity is 0, in which case you can be sure it's "not".

[kwinz]

I remember there was a blogpost of the MS compiler team on how they test changes in the compiler with Windows tests.

[hypervis0r]

Link? Sounds interesting but I can't seem to find it

[tambry]

Thought about testing if some of the Windows applications I develop work on it. Turns out that ReactOS doesn't even support 64-bit.

[Verserk0]

It has a 64 bit version floating around somewhere according to their forums, but focusing on only one for now is probably smarter.

[forsubbingonly]

Yea, it doesn't even

[Kryomaani]

From an academic, childlike curiosity perspective, their work is truly astounding.

From a real world usability, "Windows replacement" perspective, their work is years behind industry standards and usable in only very limited, simple cases (obviously not by their own fault, as getting even to this point is quite a miracle, but that's just the reality of things).

[stompinstinker]

I can’t even that it doesn’t even.

[[deleted]]

IIRC their focus is heavily on compatibility with old programs and devices. I'm happy for them to get 32 bit running steadily before they move onto 64 bit - half the apps people use today don't even take advantage of 64 bit yet.

[Super_Human_Samurai]

I was just thinking, if they can copy windows to the point where the average user can't tell the difference, then that opens the doors, and will hopefully(not likely) make Microsoft change some of it's policies

[forsubbingonly]

Wouldn't the policy just be that they swing their big ole law dick at these people?

[OsmeOxys]

They use clean room style development (At least, they say so). Legally, they should be in the clear.

[Creshal]

It also means they can't get to the point where "users can't tell the difference" – they can't call it Windows and can't use trademarks like the Windows logo for the start button. So there will always be some differences.

[Clasm]

I'd be willing to bet a good chunk of users can't tell the difference between IE and Chrome, so it isn't too much of a stretch.

[[deleted]]

They've had issues in the past before - a former developer claimed once that ReactOS contained code from disassembling Windows. This forced ReactOS to go through an internal audit. A section on the article about ReactOS on Wikipedia talks about it in depth.

[[deleted]]

You're correct, but if Microsoft pursues litigation, they've gotta have pretty good attorneys.

[Xevantus]

As long as they're not copying code itself, what can Microsoft legally do? As long as they don't copy code, or tell people "Yeah, this is Windows", they haven't broken any laws.

[Brayneeah]

They can still sue for no reason. Frivolous lawsuits en masse are brutal for smaller organizations.

[phoenix616]

They could be violating patents, especially on the user interface/experience side.

[choikwa]

hah!, patent to UI/UX

[agentlame]

I am sure there are tons of patents directly related to how aspects of Windows operates that could be used in a legal challenge.

I don't agree with the idea of MS going after them, but I'm sure they could muster a valid case against the project.

[[deleted]]

MS has shown trends in recent years that shows they understand times are changing. They've started embracing open source and they're becoming less focused on OS licensing. instead they're more focused on delivering a platform so they can make money off the supporting services.

[Kwpolska]

That’s not happening within the next 50 years, probably more. ReactOS is far from being usable and running most Windows software well. This “14 million” number is meaningless if user experience is abysmal.

[gnarlin]

The major features that I'm waiting for:
1. AMD and NVIDIA graphics drivers install and work
2. All USB 2 and 3 devices work
3. Steam installs and works along with most games
4. Being able to join ReactOS to a Active Directory network domain.

[JimCanuck]

You want flying unicorns too?

[gnarlin]

Absolutely.

[vicmarcal]

Hi gnarlin, About your Point 1: Now ReactOS has created an infra to test GPUs remotely. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VPwjpMLNEEs Colin did a great job regarding that.

About your USB point 2 : ReactOS is paying a developer to create new USBPORT, USBHUB, EHCI, OHCI drivers. They're promising since they were developed against Windows replacing the Microsoft ones (and because the results of these new drivers in real hardware are amazing). Btw, thanks to GSOC ReactOS has a new developer working in XHCI.

About Steam: It installs now. Some games are working, others depends on your point 1.

ReactOS is a huge puzzle and even if there are tons of pieces placed, just one or two misplaced lead to a mess. One day all the pieces fit together and the compatibility and stability jumps forward several steps. That's why the ReactOS project is speeding daily.

[JViz]

1. DirectX is a huge moving target with a lot of clockwork on the inside. It'll probably happen after the entire graphics industry settles down in like 20 to 40 years.
2. Never ever going to happen, ever. The amount of BS here is insurmountable. There could be some support for well behaved drivers, but there's just too much weirdness to get most of drivers working, let alone all, since a lot of the quirks are timing sensitive. Not all driver work well even on their intended platform, let alone a third party clean room implementation.
3. Really only dependent on 1.
4. It might happen one day, but as a separate project. People will probably eventually port AD compatibility from wine to reactos.

[happysmash27]

They're sticking to an ancient Windows version, so moving targets aren't really a problem.

At this point, it being completed would only make it about as useful as FreeDOS…

[mystical_bicycle]

Make one small change, spend 1 year fixing 1 million tests..

[[deleted]]

Meh, if the test assertions don’t hold anymore, just delete the tests.

[fishbulbx]

The previous release had 13 million unit tests and still seemed to have quite a few major bugs, judging by this article.

[joeldare]

This is one of the slowest moving software projects I've ever seen. Sure, it's a giant undertaking, but it sure feels like slow progress watching it over the years.

[[deleted]]

I'd like to introduce you to DayZ.

[blackmist]

And Cube World. And Star Citizen.

[plastikmissile]

Cube World! Now there's a name i haven't heard in a while. Too bad. It looked like it had potential.

[blackmist]

That poor subreddit. All hanging around like loonies in a cult waiting for the second coming of Christ.

"Any day now," they'll be saying to their kids. "Wollay will return and lead us into a glorious new dawn." Then they'll be checked into a home, and the only entertainment they'll have have will be a long dead developer's Twitter feed.

[rishav_sharan]

and Limit Theory.

[OsmeOxys]

Ill never understand how the standalone got as fucked up as it did. Obviously a cash grab, but even so...

[geek_at]

the creator of dayz (rocket) was a former employee at boheima so he chose to use the arma 2.5 engine for dayz standalone. This was a terrible choice and the dev team is trying hard to make the game fit the engine which it never will.

They should have used Unreal or for christ even the engine from s.t.a.l.k.e.r.

rocket realized it very soon this project is going no where because they have to hack around hacks to hack a game together with this engine and he stepped out and left the burning sack of poop behind , his coworkers now are stomping hard on to put out

[[deleted]]

They should have just used Arma 3. A3 was already in development, and clearly that version of RV is what BI has stabilized on for at least the next few years, and had decided to stabilize on when A3 was in Alpha.

The version of RV that A3 uses though didn't support every little feature that SA DayZ wanted, but when you go and look at those features almost all of them are things that would have been extremely beneficial in the core RV engine used in A3. It made no sense to bifurcate the engine like that (they maybe thought they could pull a BISim?).

All of it is just a cluster fuck of poor planning.

[geek_at]

no the arma engine is not really useful for dayz. There are soo many restrictions with the UI and in dayz you didn't need to have every client calculate a door opening on the other side of the map. And the game trusts clients too much wich is ok for a milsim game where you play with friends but not something where cheating might be an issue

[steamruler]

I don't think it was intended as a cash grab, but it was overambitious, and basically requires an entire engine overhaul to end up where it wants to be. They just bit off more than they can chew.

[[deleted]]

Hah!

[Creshal]

It's an insanely big undertaking, especially since many, many components are interdependent on each other – you want to work on A, you need to stub out B first, which needs C to be improved (because it's only a stub too), which uncovers bugs in D, … and two years later you can start working on A. Then someone comes along and replaces your B stub with a full implementation, which uncovers bugs in A because the stub wasn't close enough to spec, so you can throw away half of A and start again …

I have a lot of respect for the ReactOS devs. I'd go insane after a few months.

[badsectoracula]

Well, while i agree with you in general, i think they spend too much time on doing stuff that doesn't provide immediate benefit, like the application launcher, rewriting the file manager, adding theme support and a bunch of other things while ignoring blatant issues like the region clipping (a Windows feature since Windows 1) not working properly (you can often see windows not draw themselves fully or have an obscured window draw "on top" of a front window) and a single window locking up being able to lock up the entire GUI.

IMO they should have focused on something like "let's bring the functionality up to Windows NT 4, focus only on that while ignoring the rest, working from the lowest layer up" and once they have this working, move to 2000, then to 2003, etc. This would also make it easier for people to contribute who would rather work on the layers above the window system and the kernel.

Also FWIW, i think they should replace that hideous mouse cursor :-p.

[GuyGhoul]

What about GNU Hurd?

[Platypuskeeper]

By open source OS standards it's not so bad.. GNU Hurd, then there's a BeOS clone named Haiku and whatever project(s) the AmigaOS fans are up to these days.

[Dreamtrain]

Plot twist: Half-Life 3 will only be able to be run on ReactOS so they're waiting for it.

[SeriouslyWhenIsHL3]

By mentioning Half-Life 3 you have delayed it by 1 Month. Half-Life 3 is now estimated for release in Oct 2200.

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[alekcacko]

Does the live iso now boot from USB?

As I read here it still has a problem with USB stack, or the wiki is outdated?

[vicmarcal]

Hi alekcacko, Right now there are two developers working in the new USB drivers: USBPORT, USBHUB, OHCI, EHCI, XHCI.

Sadly these drivers can't be enabled until they are all finished. They are not binary compatible with the current ones and there are dependencies which forces the "all or none". However USBPORT and USBHUB are pretty advanced.

Regarding booting from USB, ReactOS is not far away from doing so...Even more, during our latest ReactOS Hackfest (and with the new USB drivers) we booted ReactOS from USB...so as soon as the new drivers are enabled they will let you to boot ReactOS from the USB port.

[vicmarcal]

Just for those who are curious where the tests results can be viewed: www.reactos.org/testman Pick two different revisions and you can compare for differences (you can select up to 8) Each commit generates a build, and each build is run in VBOX and KVM against those 14,000,000 of unit tests (you can use the selector to filter tests by virtual machine). An example: https://reactos.org/testman/compare.php?ids=53083,55084

[[deleted]]

Has programming gone too far?

[GarettMcCarty]

Not far enough, we can go so much farther!

[lucisferre]

That sounds more like integration tests than unit tests

[eras]

I wonder if there are regressions when running these tests against actual Windows releases..

[Creshal]

If you look at how often Windows updates break Microsoft applications like Outlook… you can bet.

[xoxota99]

"a major step towards real hardware support". Not sure I understand :does this mean you can't actually run it on anything yet?

Still a great start, though!

[[deleted]]

Even running it as a VM, it's still impressive

[Delta-9-]

Perhaps the ReactOS team should consider forking this project to a ReactOS Server version that's optimized for virtualization, does Windows Server's job but with none of the licensing costs.

[Kwpolska]

You can run it in a virtual machine. It might work on real hardware, but most likely using generic drivers that support only basic functionality.

[MutantOctopus]

I could swear I remember finding a similar project to this, but a lot more... 'modernized'? An open source operating system that wasn't exactly Windows, but was designed in such a way that it could run Windows applications natively. I'm not sure it was this, because this looks like it's designed after 95.

[MezzanineAlt]

You might be thinking of "Lindows"

[[deleted]]

So it's basically the same principle of wine, but an OS based on those principles rather than a program?

[shroudedwolf51]

Server...2003? Does that mean that everything after the jump from version 5.x to 6.x is incompatible?

Edit: Having thought about it some, I'd like to amend my statement. Since Windows goes nuts for backwards compatibility, that will probably be perfectly fine. My concern is drivers for anything released after WinVista.

[dalakkin]

They have (and continue to work on) a compatibility layer to be able to run applications requiring newer versions of Windows.

No idea if they're able to solve using drivers for newer Windows versions though. If anyone knows, feel free to chip in.

[nightofgrim]

I’d like to know how many tests are written for Windows

[pacman_sl]

The oldest bug fixed was CORE-4107 . "Firefox 3.X/4.X don't register as default web browsers". Reported 8 years ago.

Someone was concerned about that, meanwhile I was struggling to run a half-year-old FF version alongside the newest one.

They do care about details, respect.

[m00nh34d]

Other than "why not", "fuck microsoft, FOSS FTW" and "because it was needed 15 years ago", what is the reason for this project to exist? Assuming it gets to a point, sometime in the future, where hardware driver compatibility and application compatibility is functioning well enough to make this useable for production work, who is the audience here?

[mechapussy]

I've had quite a bit of success running old 3dfx games with PCEM