Bill McKenzie brought it up in another thread (about BDA, which to ME means “bios data area”… However, it now seems that all 3 letter acronyms have been used and are being recycled to mean different things… but I digress):
First:
Then, in a follow-up:
Good question, Bill. I wonder that too.
I know the devs were strongly in favor of this during KMDF development… so what happened?
Where IS the whole issue of KMDF source code being distributed with KMDF??
Because I suspect I know the answer, I’ll list a few reasons that KMDF source code would be ultra-helpful:
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Debugging would be VASTLY easier – My favorite case is you’ve got KMDF Verifier on, you call a function KmdfBlahMakeMyDay… and you hit a breakpoint in the Framework. No message, just a break point. You dump the IFR. No information. There WILL be information in the log, of course, but it won’t be there until after the higher-level KMDF function detects the error and PUTs it there. AFTER the breakpoint.
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The little niggling bugs in KMDF would be more quickly spotted, and reported by the community (well, assuming we HAD a way to report them) – I’m thinking of things like weirded-out error messages here.
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Many of the existing limitations/inconsistencies/quirks of the current KMDF implementation would be clear… You wouldn’t have to “try it” to see. Here I’m talking about things like which Objects can have ExecutionLevel constraints, how synch scope actually works, etc, etc…
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The community would be able to verify the documentation for themselves, and report doc errors. Things like “What’s the default sync scope”??
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Devs could help each other with KMDF problems and issues. The KMDF community support program would be something more than “Let’s ask Doron”
Are Bill and I the only ones in the community that thinks KMDF Source would be helpful? Anybody else “notice” that the KMDF source code never shipped??
Let me be clear: Nobody from MSFT, not once, ever actually promised to ship KMDF source code, so it’s NOT an issue of “You promised but didn’t deliver”… but during the project, when asked about source they DID certainly say “that’s the plan” and “we’re working on it”.
So, seriously… where ARE we with getting source code for KMDF?
Maybe I need to turn this into a Pontification or an article or something, huh?? Maybe get this issue more exposure???
Peter
OSR