On Thu, 6 Apr 2000, Jeremy White wrote:
[...]
> We have a PHP/MySQL database that we are hoping to release
> to the world 'soon' which does this.
[...]
> You can then edit any given API and enter subjective
> data about the quality of its implementation.
[...]
This sounds great. Isn't maintaining the 'subjective data'
about the quality of the implementation going to be a lot of work? Maybe
if it were integrated with the documentation system, like the 'BUGS'
section of some man pages, it could help. It would still be a lot of
work but it might have a better chance of staying in synch with the
implementation.
[...]
> p.s. Note that this method only provides a static analysis of
> what an app really uses. You can get mislead, because
> many apps do LoadLibrary/GetProcAddress and so you
> miss those APIs. Also, the new COM interfaces tend
> not to be caught by this approach. Still, it's a good
> start.
Yes. Another way this can be misleading is that a missing API
may only affect a specific area of the application. If that area is very
specialized and rarely used it may have almost no effect on the
application's usability. In other words this does not tell us whether
the application will not be usable at all because this is a critical
API, or if this will cause a slight malfunction in one case in a
thousand.
But I agree it's a good start and I don't see many alternatives.
Except maybe using an 'strace' like facility to record all cross-dll
calls and work from there. But then the problem is making sure you get a
good coverage of the tool.
--
Francois Gouget [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://fgouget.free.fr/
Linux, WinNT, MS-DOS - also known as the Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
