Work-in-progress 0.4.4 changelog

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ctasan
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Work-in-progress 0.4.4 changelog

Post by ctasan »

This time, I have decided to start 0.4.4 changelog now instead of testing period, to make our changelog more detailed. EVERYONE ELSE MAY CONTRIBUTE!

Kernel:

-Some fixes in Security Manager and Local Procedure Call, mainly adding SEH protection.
-Some Common Cache fixes.
-Some minor fixes in Memory Manager to pass more tests.
-Some FreeLoader (bootloader) improvements.

Win32 subsystem:

-Printing support branch (colins-printing-for-freedom) is now merged, now we have a working basic print stack, but not usable at the moment.
-user32: leave dialog procedure calls protected with SEH to handle exceptions.
-user32: Improved task switcher.
-Implemented DC bounds support.
-Fixed some drawing/painting issues and debug log spams.
-Fixed some bugs uncovered by revision 72495.

Filesystems:

-Some FAT32 fixes.

Drivers:

-Some progress in USB audio driver.
-Added basic AHCI driver.
-Merged some USB stack improvements.

Shell:

-Shell bug fixes:
- Explorer command parameters implemented.
- Fixed some non-working buttons.
- Removed some duplicate entries in Start Menu.

-Major browseui.dll leak fixes.
-When starting apps via Run, exe extension is automatically added.

Kernel-mode DLLs:

-Some lsasrv fixes.
-Filing more gaps in advapi32.
-Added some stubs to make some Windows Server 2003 DLLs working in ReactOS.
-Major fixes in Services Control Manager:
-Fixed broken service arguments.
-Environment blocks are now properly initialized for started services.
-Some user accounts and service initialization work.

-Lots of fixes in userenv.dll.

User-mode DLLs:

-Some progress in apphelp.dll. More compatibility shims have been implemented.
-Bug fixes in networking DLLs continue (memory corruption/new implementations). More network-related apps work.
-Started logging events properly.
-mpr.dll works continue to make net command more usable. Also, VboxSF driver is now usable without hacks.

Commands and utilities:

-SSL support added to remote desktop application.
-Fixed a regedit bug.
-Works have started towards USB boot, mainly filesystem fixes. Not finished yet.
-Boot sector of ReactOS ISOs have been reworked.
-Lots of apitests have been added.

Tasks:

-BTRFS updated to 0.8.
-mkisofs tool is now being used to create ReactOS ISOs.
-conutils' usage has been widened for commands.
-Sync with Wine Staging 1.9.23.
-uniata updated to 0.46e1.
-Started to use isohybrid tool.
Last edited by ctasan on Tue Jan 31, 2017 10:15 pm, edited 8 times in total.
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ctasan
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Re: Work-in-progress 0.4.4 changelog

Post by ctasan »

We are here now! Changelog has been updated. Contact me if I missed something!
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dizt3mp3r
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Re: Work-in-progress 0.4.4 changelog

Post by dizt3mp3r »

Thankyou.
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Re: Work-in-progress 0.4.4 changelog

Post by PurpleGurl »

Very good log!

Not sure if you want my suggestion. Take this line:

-mkisofs tool has started to be used to create ReactOS ISOs.

That is clear enough to make out, but it is clunky and the grammar feels off. So why not use the present or present participle tense?

-mkisofs tool is now being used to create ReactOS ISOs.

Or even:

-mkisofs tool is now used to create ReactOS ISOs.

Or for a more active voice:

-We now use mkisofs tool to create ReactOS ISOs.

While there are other places, I see no need to comment due to the nature of the type of writing. The technical genre is quite forgiving and informal. That said, it is important, IMHO, to be clear and not word things in ways that require a lot of extra words. Logs are, by nature, boring enough to read to average people, and if they are to read them, they need to be able to get directly to the meat.
ctasan
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Re: Work-in-progress 0.4.4 changelog

Post by ctasan »

dizt3mp3r wrote:Thankyou.
Not at all! :)
PurpleGurl wrote:Very good log!

Not sure if you want my suggestion. Take this line:

-mkisofs tool has started to be used to create ReactOS ISOs.

That is clear enough to make out, but it is clunky and the grammar feels off. So why not use the present or present participle tense?

-mkisofs tool is now being used to create ReactOS ISOs.

Or even:

-mkisofs tool is now used to create ReactOS ISOs.

Or for a more active voice:

-We now use mkisofs tool to create ReactOS ISOs.

While there are other places, I see no need to comment due to the nature of the type of writing. The technical genre is quite forgiving and informal. That said, it is important, IMHO, to be clear and not word things in ways that require a lot of extra words. Logs are, by nature, boring enough to read to average people, and if they are to read them, they need to be able to get directly to the meat.
Fixed, thanks for your suggestions! Sorry for my shortage.
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Re: Work-in-progress 0.4.4 changelog

Post by ctasan »

(Last bumping for Phoronix)
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A_S
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Re: Work-in-progress 0.4.4 changelog

Post by A_S »

I think log should be more detailed. Now it's very general and does not contain usefull information at some points (some fixes in <component> tells nothing). Please add lists of fixes and links to JIRA tickets. More details can also help to show anount of work and progress to public.
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Re: Work-in-progress 0.4.4 changelog

Post by ROCKNROLLKID »

I am not quite sure why you are doing this anyways? Isn't the ReactOS changelog automatic?
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Re: Work-in-progress 0.4.4 changelog

Post by Black_Fox »

@A_S - that goes into the official autogenerated changelog here
@ROCKNROLLKID - yes, this is something in the middle between the complete list of fixed JIRA issues and the sentences like "we are more stable and WIndows-compatible now" - not just a sentence, but not 158 bullet points either.

I understand that this is basically non-guaranteed community effort, so that it cannot go into the official changelog as its integral part, but maybe a link to a forum post could be added under the label of "unofficial community summary of the notable changes" any time it appears?
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Re: Work-in-progress 0.4.4 changelog

Post by PurpleGurl »

I like this approach. It would be nice if it could be merged with the other.

I do see shortcomings with the automatic approach. Not every "fix" is really fixed or necessarily happened during the current release. Here are two types of scenarios of this type that I've found thus far:

1. The bug was just recently discovered to not need fixing. Perhaps it was an adventitious fix, meaning fixed in the course of addressing another bug or during a major rewrite of a section. It might have even been fixed for some time, and someone finally formally closed the case. So there's no associated revision recorded as it was unclear which revision fixed it.

2. The bug still exists but is closed due to a procedural issue such as being a duplicate or a part of another problem.
ctasan
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Re: Work-in-progress 0.4.4 changelog

Post by ctasan »

PurpleGurl wrote:I like this approach. It would be nice if it could be merged with the other.

I do see shortcomings with the automatic approach. Not every "fix" is really fixed or necessarily happened during the current release. Here are two types of scenarios of this type that I've found thus far:

1. The bug was just recently discovered to not need fixing. Perhaps it was an adventitious fix, meaning fixed in the course of addressing another bug or during a major rewrite of a section. It might have even been fixed for some time, and someone finally formally closed the case. So there's no associated revision recorded as it was unclear which revision fixed it.

2. The bug still exists but is closed due to a procedural issue such as being a duplicate or a part of another problem.
Well said. This is my main point.

At this point, official announcements and changelogs are insufficient. For example, we did lots of networking DLL improvements and shell32 leak fixes, but this was not mentioned in announcements. Or in SVN, many commits don't include any bug report.

When an user wonders what was done in ReactOS, he/she has two choices: just reading simple announcements or waaay more detailed changelogs. For me, it is disappointing.

To remove this situation, I decided to start making chanelogs for our community, and voluntarily. I remove your load for changelogs. Look at Wine! They do describe what had been done correctly, and I leave with good feelings, or look Haiku. They include even just programming-related stuff that doesn't mean much for end user, but they include them understable. We miss that.

Please, please help me doing that. In every second we pass, I am ready for your suggestions. And let's make them end-user noticeable! Adding into our Wiki, or making a sticky forum thread, just what is suitable.

This changelog will continue in 0.4.5.

Also, someone can notice Michael Larabel about that.
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dizt3mp3r
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Re: Work-in-progress 0.4.4 changelog

Post by dizt3mp3r »

I am very pleased that your reinterpretation of the changelog will continue.
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Re: Work-in-progress 0.4.4 changelog

Post by PurpleGurl »

Yes, you touch on another shortcoming I missed. Not all revisions have associated JIRA entries.

I like how you are doing it since it is geared more for power users, not developers (who already know what's going on and have much more technical descriptions) and not newbies (who don't really care about change logs anyway).
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Re: Work-in-progress 0.4.4 changelog

Post by middings »

The topic 0.4.4 has arrived includes a little discussion about the official changelog's style. Because it is appropriate for this topic, I repeat it here:
ctasan (edited by middings) wrote:...I tried to contact the devs to ask why aren't my changelogs going into the Wiki? If I recall correctly, Ziliang Guo (Z98) said preparing them was time-consuming, so I took it over. My changelogs are not just like SVN logs filled with technical terms. I prepare them with Wine's style to enhance understandability.
Z98 wrote:An explicit decision was made late in the 0.3.x series that all future changelogs would be just a list of Jira issues resolved. This way the process is almost completely automated so that there is no dependency on any person finding time to go through all commits. It also served to act as an inducement to get the developers to actually, you know, track their work with tickets.
Persuading developers to track their work ("Eek! Me, document something? Why do you think they call it code?") is a good thing to do. A growing 'bank' of commits with JIRA tickets and descriptive commit comments is a valuable asset for the developer team (dev team) and the whole ReactOS community.

I believe the project also benefits from ctasan's work to make an enhanced changelog "more for power users, not developers", as PurpleGurl described it. Ctasan's enhanced changelogs also show casual visitors to the ReactOS.com site understandable evidence that the project is making significant and constant forward progress with each release. This helps the reputation of the ReactOS project and boosts the morale of the entire ReactOS community. Thank you, ctasan.
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Re: Work-in-progress 0.4.4 changelog

Post by ctasan »

You're all welcome! :) And also my morale has increased!

Now, let's make this changelogs noticeable. Any ideas?
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