Computer Hardware and Software
Posts tagged C
ReactOS Shell + new developers
Dec 27th
The shell that users interact with in ReactOS is actually several components all tied together, which is why a rewrite is highly nontrivial. Besides the explorer shell itself there are the shell32, browseui, comctl32, and shlwapi libraries, to name just a few. In ReactOS, much of the functionality in the libraries are all crammed into the explorer shell because the libraries themselves did not really exist. This is due to the current explorer’s Wine heritage and the fact that Wine really does not need a shell32 implementation. One such example would be the start menu itself. This is not actually implemented in explorer, but merely exposed by it. Another is the menu system Read the rest of this entry »
Inside the mind of a ReactOS dev: implementing _SEH_prolog and _SEH_epilog
Dec 22nd
Disclaimer
This post is not for the faint of heart. This post assumes you know the C language (especially the Microsoft implementation), C compilers (especially Visual C++), what intrinsic functions are, what SEH is and how it works, and how to read x86 assembly. I could spend entire blog posts, no, entire blogs, just explaining you what the words alone mean, so I’ll just go ahead and assume you know who you are.
… baby Jesus?
Implementing open source intrinsics for commercial compilers is a horrible liability, and a thankless job: almost nobody will even notice you have done anything, and half of those who do notice will accuse you of copyright violation. Since my work will not only be used by ReactOS, but also by projects like mingw-w64 whose reputation has not been compromised yet, I have to be extra careful with it.
For this reason, and because I believe I’m not alone in enjoying this kind of crazy shit, I have decided to blog to document my thought processes while writing obscure, low-level code. I hope at least some of you will enjoy.