Beginning Development FAQ

[Z98]

Many people come into this forum asking where to start. This will hopefully answer some of the most common answers.

Q1: What can I do to help?

We're always looking for either coders or testers. We're especially in need of people who know how to write NT drivers, cause our current drivers could use some improvement.

Testing on real hw is especially important as the kernel rewrite approaches completion. Some issues are known, such as missing assembly code and broken implementations causing issues on certain processors. Bugs found in trunk can be reported in Bugzilla, but try to avoid entering duplicate bugs.

Q2: Who should I talk to about helping ReactOS?

The best way to get in touch with a developer is to hop onto the irc channel.

http://www.reactos.org/en/community_irc.html

A list of the developers, their IRC nicks, and their respective fields is here: http://www.reactos.org/wiki/index.php/Developer_Roles

Note: If you have a question, don't first ask to ask the question. Just ask the question and if someone knows the answer, they'll usually answer. If you want a specific developer, ping them and then ask the question.

Others will be added as I figure out what they do.

Another way is to join the ROS-dev mailing list:

http://www.reactos.org/mailman/listinfo/ros-dev

Q3: What language do you guys use?

C and assembly, with very little C++ for some included programs. In the OS itself, only C and assembly is allowed.

Q4: Why only C and assembly?

The reasoning is actually because of the tools we use. GCC's C++ compiler is less than stellar so we limit things to C and assembly to make our lives easier.

Q5: How do I get ReactOS' source code and build it?

This information is covered on this page:
http://www.reactos.org/wiki/index.php/Build_Environment

The recommended build environment is the RosBE. It's designed to run on Windows and *nix, though the *nix version may not be as up to date as the Windows version.

Q6: Is there any kind of coding style that is expected?

http://www.reactos.org/wiki/index.php/Coding_Style

That said, this is more of a starting point. While using this style would be greatly appreciated, it is not strictly enforced.

More info will be added as I get more questions.

[LMH1]

Z98: thank you for great guide "Beginning Development FAQ"

Please also make question in "Bold text" that will be more easy to read.

But please add answer on this:

Developments ReactOS Operating Systems

Q7 Which software to devs use with making ReactOS software on (C and assembly?)

Can be e.g

Text code editor
Jedit, notepad

GUI code editor
Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition

Q8 How to be developer, what is requirement?
C and assembly experence.

Q9 Which user licence is supported on ReactOS?
E.g GPL, LGPL

Q10 Can everone change ReactOS source code, so long updates dont make troble for other uses?

Q11 Witch software/apps is do ReactOS needs on to be a completed OS like Windows XP?

E.g ReactOS web browser, email client, msn messenger client, ReactOS software updates, system restore, easy error report software tools to bugzilla.

Q12 How can we be sure that none other work with software/apps that I think to work on?

Q13 What is the most important function on ReactOS OS that is needed to be fixed?

E.g ReactOS live/install function one cd, wine compatibility with windows software and drives.

Developments ReactOS Web pages

Q14 Witch Web pages language is supported?
e.g PHP. SQL.

Q15 How to be a web pages developer?

Testers

Q16 What information do developer need to know reason for software/hardware failed/do not support in ROS?

Q17 Will only ReactOS [#inc_reactos_version] be compatibility with hardware drives on windows 2000?

[Haos]

You should add to dev list:

- janderwald: sound issues and compatibility, running real soundcards in ROS (mostly kernelmode components, like sound drivers, portcls, ks, sysaudio);
- aicom: networking issues and compatibility, running real network adapters in ROS (NDIS, TCP, AFD, WLAN, networking drivers)
- bugboy: NPFS, usermode libraries

[Z98]

LMH1:

Most of those questions should be self explanatory, especially the license stuff. Others, like what's the most important thing to work on right now, changes too quickly and is not something any of the developers would feel comfortable answering. As for included applications, that's also not something the developers would want to answer, since we try to minimize included apps to begin with. As for making sure no one else is working on the same thing you are, there are no ways to guarantee it. Some of those questions are also from a user-centric perspective, not developer-centric. Finally, website matters go into the website feedback subforum. I have however made the questions bold, as that does help with seeing them.

Haos: Done Also added HeisSpiter.

[DangerGround]

maybe it's easier to link to developer roles instead of listing them here ?

[Z98]

Done. This was originally written before that page existed, but that would certainly save me much effort in the future.

[Haos]

Still lacking info i provided, especially on janderwald and bugboy.

[Z98]

The page is a wiki and also isn't protected.