Inside The Development of Windows NT

mrpuffypants writes "Winsupersite has a 3 part series this month about the history and development of Windows NT all the way up through Windows Server 2003. The author goes fairly in-depth describing how Windows is developed, managed, and how all 50 million+ lines are compiled daily. Part One covers the history of NT from its early days at Microsoft and Part Two discusses how the deployment of the forthcoming server version of Windows is coordinated daily." *shiver*

Comments

Re:hmmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but I think that's Waddle, the Beanie Buddy (a larger version of Waddle, the Beanie Baby). Penguins are cool to a lot of folks - and not all stuffed penguins are Tux.

Alpha

[deacent]

I see a lot of complaining in the article about how some architectures were not ready for NT on a timely basis (Intel i860, PowerPC), but I see no mention how they were so slow to bring NT to the Alpha. I recall that DEC actually ended up porting VMS to the Alpha because they were waiting on MS for their promised NT release. I'm a bit curious to hear from the developers about their perspective on that.

I've used both NT and VMS on the Alpha (as well as a Unix varient). NT is sooooo slow.

-Jennifer

Re:Hmm

[mrpuffypants]

Winsupersite is, for the most part, a very pro-microsoft website...however, even if their reviews and previews may be slanted a bit they still get very early releases of different products and write decent reviews of them...with lots of screenshots!

The NT Kernel Is Good

[DakotaSandstone]

I know this is the equivalent of Flamebait on /., but the NT kernel (borrowed though it may be from other OS ideas) is actually darn good.

Passing IRP's (IO request packets) between drivers creates a much more well-defined interface that a bunch of globally namespaced functions just calling each other (like some other OSes we all know). It also lends itself to a layered driver model (Bus Driver, Physical Driver, Functional Driver) much better.

I really like the NT Kernel. What driver developers do with it isn't the kernel's fault.

Re:The NT Kernel Is Good

[Elbereth]

The NT kernel was good. Then Microsoft moved the GUI into the kernel. We all know what happened after that. Okay, to be fair, the NT kernel is still pretty nice, but it's deeply annoying that Microsoft is so willing to sacrifice stability for a little more speed. I find it difficult to crash Win2k and XP, but it does happen... mostly from PC games.

Re:The NT Kernel Is Good

[DakotaSandstone]

Good point. That was a mixed blessing. But then again, so is the fact that any 3rd party can write a kernel driver (although MS is trying to assuage this with things like driver signing)

I've read some interesting defenses of moving GDI to the kernel. Some of the rationale was:

• GDI crashing, be it in the kernel or user mode, is basically a fatal system error. As designed, it is not clear how NT could "restart" a crashed user-mode GUI subsystem. Even if GDI is user mode, if it crashes, you'd probably have to reboot anyway.
• There are many other complex subsystems that exist in the kernel, and have been made pretty bulletproof (scheduler, disk subsystem). What makes the graphics subsystem any more dangerous? Yes, moving code to the kernel requires less buggy code, but we're Microsoft, and we're up to the challenge. It can be done.

Personally, I would love to see an OS take advantage of more than 2 of the 4 "rings" an x86 processor has. In such an OS, one could theoretically have a driver crash, and could still recover.

Until that day, though, I agree - GUI subsystem code is hard to make bulletproof, and moving said code into the "sacred" kernel is pretty gutsy.

Re:WinNT development cycle.

[MaxQuordlepleen]

[---snip---]
tanzarian:/$ grep -r ' goto ' /usr/src/linux | wc -l
1543
[----snip---]

that's from 2.4.19

ReactOS

[dcuny]

Why not have a look at ReactOS, an open source clone of NT?

Unlike some doomed attempts to make a "better" Windows clone *cough*Freedows*cough* that degenerated into a puff of vaporware, the fine people at ReactOS have been keeping their noses to the grindstone and quietly worked away at getting an NT clone working. It's still a long way from replacing NT, as this screenshot of the one and only GUI application shows.

But if you want a free and open look at Inside the development of [a] Windows NT [clone], ReactOS is a good place to look.

They've done a number of things right:

• Shut up and coded...
• Picked NT as a target instead of the more glitzy Win9x
• And coded...
• Focused on core features instead of the GUI
• And coded...
• Borrowed from Wine where it seemed sensible

Did I mention they spend thankless hours coding?

How MS "punishes" bug meeting truants

[dpbsmith]

Let's see if I've got this right:

"This late in the development process, bugs are often passed along, or "punted," to the next Windows release--Longhorn--if they're not sufficiently problematic."

"The atmosphere in War Room is intimidating, and I spent most of my time in the room, silent and almost cowering, praying that Wanke wouldn't turn his attention to me or my group.... The most virulent treatment, naturally, is saved for those foolish enough to blow off a War Room meeting. On the day I attended, one feature group had four of its bugs punted to Longhorn because they had failed to shown up for War Room. When someone argued that they should be given another day, Wanke simply said, "F#$% 'em. If it was that important, they would have been here. It's in Longhorn. Next bug."

So... in this macho atmosphere, reeking of testosterone... the punishment for not being that the bug meet is that... YOU DON'T HAVE TO FIX YOUR BUGS UNTIL THE NEXT MAJOR RELEASE?????????

Words fail me...