Community > ReactOS Newsletter Archive > ReactOS Newsletter: Newsletter 35

ReactOS Newsletter - Newsletter 35 (#35)

Release Time Build Environment The big picture Recent Changes Newsletter Archive

by Samuel on 2007-12-16

Release Time

According to our project manager the change log should be finished by the end of December and if all remaining blockers are fixed release will occur sometime in January. ReactOS 0.3.4 promises to improve on 0.3.3 by working on more hardware, running even more applications, being faster and more stable than ever before. Even so many of the same old restrictions apply. We thank everyone who has helped make this release possible. Please also read the recent status update.

Build Environment

RosBE v1.1 was released on December 8th, 2007. This release addressed many issues that have been plaguing the windows version of the RosBE (see the included ChangeLog.txt for details) and added one simple but fairly significant feature, a "Standard MinGW Build Environment" prompt similar to the "ReactOS Build Environment" prompt that previous versions had. This new prompt has the following:

• Sets standard paths for MinGW/GCC instead of placing them inside the HOST_CFLAGS and HOST_CPPFLAGS environment variables like the ReactOS prompt does.
• Doesn't use any of the scripts that the ReactOS prompt does. (other than chdefgcc.cmd)
• Provides a stable, easy to use and modify mingw tool chain for win32.

So in short, this new prompt is for those that wish to use the RosBE for standard MinGW/GCC development.

The big picture

A common question I get about ReactOS is "Does it run any games?". I'm happy to say that it does. OpenGL games work with the mesa32 7.0 driver, which has been made to work in ros. Furthermore wine directx has been compiled and made to run on ReactOS, in this case it works by translating DX calls to opengl and it works rather well. Which games, you ask? Take a look at our screenshot page.

Our native hardware accelerated directx is still under construction, but it has been able to run some simple demo applications. The native interface will provide the "same" level of acceleration and functionality as does MS DirectX and is preferred to the wine directx method. DirectX and GDI is interrelated and in fact share some interfaces.

The win32k/gdi "rewrite" is an important aspect of this and future ReactOS versions. For those that aren't that familiar with the subject, win32k.sys, gdi32.dll and user32.dll are part of the Graphical Subsystem.

Currently many win32 applications fail to run because of incorrect behavior in this subsystem, problems as simple as reporting the wrong error code to as bad as not providing the same structures, accepting bad data or hacks.

The obvious consequences of this are weird behavior of windows, dialogs, controls, redrawing, icons, etc..., which affects the performance of programs or stops them from running. We look forward to a time where this happens less and less.

Recent Changes

• Cm rewrite branch merged, cm/config rewrite nearly finished.
• Usetup (1st stage installer) gets a translated interface.
• Shell32 interfaces improved.
• GDI handle table, device capabilities, gdi batch functions, DCE, and other fixes.
• DirectX COM interfaces helper functions and device enumeration.
• Removal of numerous Memory(Red Zone) overwrites.
• ros-xbox resurrected (boots to 2nd stage.), video and HAL fixes
• auto synchs to wine
• massive amount of translations.
• tons of bug fixes.