[actionfromafar]

I think they should focus on embedded devices, and a story as a replacement for appliances using either Windows or Windows CE.

Even in todays rather unstable state, it would work fine if it was easy to bundle it such:

  - an application EXE

  - boot with a readonly root file system

  - read-write partition for application/user settings

  - builtin watchdog to reboot when/if the system crashes

There's a shit-ton of stuff running Windows of some sort behind the scenes.

I'm sure there's also some kind of cloud application I can't quite put my finger on which would be useful, but maybe more niche. I have been known to test Win32 applications I have written against ReactOS. If it works there, it will run on every Windows version still running under the sun.

Maybe as part of a CI pipeline generating Win32 EXEs?

[giancarlostoro]

The only "downside" to the CI pipeline for generating Win32 EXEs is you can already do this from Linux, I don't recall if C does, but I almost want to say gcc will do it from Linux, I definitely know on Linux with FreePascal/Lazarus I've generated an EXE file. So you don't truly need ReactOS in this regard, but maybe the CI pipeline for testing and confirming that it works might be worthwhile to ReactOS to create some sort of profitable project. I'm thinking of things like Puppet or other web automation testing tools, but for GUIs on Windows using ReactOS as the host, with automated UI tests that output screenshots.

I would love to see ReactOS get more serious funding, and get farther ahead than where it is today.

[xet7]

Lazarus/FreePascal 32bit does work on ReactOS. Also some older versions of Tcl/Tk / Tclkit works. ReactOS has GUI package manager with some programming languages etc.

[actionfromafar]

I didn't actually mean generating the EXE from ReactOS, that's easy in Linux. (I develop for Windows in Linux and MacOS.) But I meant regression testing on ReactOS.

[ptx]

What about MSI installers? Any tips?

[mike_hearn]

You can use Conveyor to generate MSIX packages from Linux or macOS if you want to ship Windows apps from a Linux machine. (https://hydraulic.software/)

[actionfromafar]

The ones I know of are WiX[0] and NSIS[1].

0: https://wixtoolset.org/

1: https://nsis.sourceforge.io/Main_Page

[giancarlostoro]

Ah fair! I misunderstood.

[JPLeRouzic]

I think that one of the "very" early developers is now mainly interested with embedded devices.

https://github.laoxienet.cn/reactos/reactos/blob/34593d933be...

[_joel]

Re: cloud thing, https://www.balena.io/ ?

[actionfromafar]

For a greenfield project, sure, why not. I was thinking about existing stuff, like the gas station pumps with dodgy touch screens I worked on once upon a time. A bunch of stuff already written and moving to Balena would not exactly have been cheap.

But if there was a ReactOS BSP or SDK of sorts, or even a HOWTO for embedded ReactOS, it could make sense to take the plunge.