(GSoC 2026) Build Haiku & Explored Codebase - Found Initial Bugs – Where to Start?

Community
1

Hello Haiku Community,
I am Taha Mirza, 2nd year Computer Science Student at Fast University, Pakistan. I am very interested in contributing to Haiku and preparing myself for Google Summer of Code 2026.
I have build the Haiku from source and explored the codebase, I noticed some UI bugs (Deskbar menu contains the parent element which ends up endless opening), I tried to understand the code through Docs to get it done. But I could not find the right parts to work on but I am much familiar with code layout now.
I have experience with, C++ with concepts on OOP and Data Structures, I prepared for the ICPC programming contest, which helped me improve my problem-solving and debugging skills. Also, I made APIs in C++ for real problems, and assembly x86 which gives ability to understand at low level.

I would greatly appreciate any guidance on:

Where to start as a new contributor
Which parts of the codebase are good for start
Any recommended issues, documentation, or tools to study

I am highly motivated to learn, contribute consistently, and become an active member of this community.

Thank you for your time, and I look forward to learning from you all.

Best regards,
Taha Mirza-

6 Likes
2

Hello and welcome @tahamirza , not a developer here but nice to see your interest in the project, wrote some links down where you might find something of interest, I’m sure the community will be around to guide you further.

2 Likes
3

Thanks, Appreciate that. So much excited to learn more from Community.

1 Like
4

Hello,

Additionally to the links Begasus provided, Haiku Git Repositories — Haiku internals documentation has a brief overview of how the sourcecode directory tree is organized.

For example if you found an issue in DeskBar as you mention, the starting point should be src/apps/deskbar.

If you give more details about the problem you found (maybe a screenshot of what’s happening), and where you tried to look for it, we can provide more specific help on locating the corresponding sourcecode.

2 Likes
5

Probably also a good link to put up for people interested in GSoC. :+1: